Centralized Priority Management Allocation for Network-on-Chip Router

In Network on Chip (NoC), Virtual-channel allocation (VA) is responsible for matching input virtual channels with output virtual channels that are not currently in use by other packets. The functionality of VA directly determines the efficiency of NoC router. In the general case, VA is achieved by two stages. However, a matching quality loss is generated between the two stages and can severely reduce the router performance. In this paper, we present a new allocation mechanism called centralized priority management allocation (CPMA). By coordinating all arbiters' priority bit in allocator's first stage, CPMA can reduce the request conflict in the second stage. Our results show that the new design can increase performance and reduce the power consumption at the same time.