Analytical performance modeling of shuffle–exchange inspired mesh-based Network-on-Chips

This paper proposes and evaluates a shuffle–exchange as an efficient alternative to the popular mesh topology for Network-on-Chips (NoCs). Although the proposed topology imposes the cost equal to that of the mesh topology, the proposed topology (1) provides lower diameter for NoC, (2) offers better performance under uniform, hotspot, and matrix-transpose traffic patterns and (3) consumes lower energy for packet delivery. To speed up the evaluation process of the proposed topology, an analytical performance model is proposed in the paper to predict the performance of NoCs. The model uses a network of M/G/1 queues to consider channels of the NoC. In this way, the model accurately estimates the average message latency which is a widely used representative for the network performance. Results obtained from the analytical model are in good agreement with those of simulations for a wide range of working conditions (e.g. various network sizes, different message lengths, and different traffic patterns). The proposed analytical model provides a minimum of 400% speed-up in the evaluation process of the proposed topology.