Congestion-controlled best-effort communication for networks-on-chip

Abstract. Congestion has negative effects on network performance. In this paper, a novel congestion control strategy is presented for Networks-on-Chip (NoC). For this purpose we introduce a new communication service, congestioncontrolled best-effort (CCBE). The load offered to a CCBE connection is controlled based on congestion measurements in the NoC. Link utilization is monitored as a congestion measure, and transported to a Model Predictive Controller (MPC). Guaranteed bandwidth and latency connections in the NoC are used for this, to assure progress of link utilization data in a congested NoC. We also present a simple but effective model for link utilization for the model-based predictions. Experimental results show that the presented strategy is effective and has reaction speeds of several microseconds which is considered acceptable for realtime embedded systems.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: DATE
• Authors: Jan Willem van den Brand, Calin Ciordas, Kees Goossens, Twan Basten
• Keywords: Congestion Control Strategy, DATE 2007, Hardware, Link Utilization, Link Utilization Data