Degradability Enabled Routing for Network-on-Chip Switches

Network-on-Chip topologies provide inherent redundancy of communication paths between sources and sinks. By disabling faulty parts and choosing alternative routes, this redundancy can be exploited for preventing packets from being corrupted. In this article we present a formalized and generalized description of adaptive routing algorithms that allow utilizing the remaining functionality of partly defective switches. An example shows that, compared to taking such defective switches offline, a more graceful degradation of communication performance is achieved.