Application-aware prioritization mechanisms for on-chip networks

Network-on-Chips (NoCs) are likely to become a critical shared resource in future many-core processors. The challenge is to develop policies and mechanisms that enable multiple applications to efficiently and fairly share the network, to improve system performance. Existing local packet scheduling policies in the routers fail to fully achieve this goal, because they treat every packet equally, regardless of which application issued the packet. This paper proposes prioritization policies and architectural extensions to NoC routers that improve the overall application-level throughput, while ensuring fairness in the network. Our prioritization policies are application-aware, distinguishing applications based on the stall-time criticality of their packets. The idea is to divide processor execution time into phases, rank applications within a phase based on stall-time criticality, and have all routers in the network prioritize packets based on their applications’ ranks. Our scheme also...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: MICRO
• Authors: Reetuparna Das, Onur Mutlu, Thomas Moscibroda, Chita R. Das
• Keywords: Hardware, MICRO 2009, Packet Scheduling Policies, Prioritization Policies, Stall-time Criticality