Packet traffic analysis of scale-free networks for large-scale network-on-chip design

Recent progress in integrated circuit technologies requires precise evaluation between dynamic characteristics and topological architecture design. In this paper, we have investigated the performance evaluation of network-on-chip (NoC) architectures constructed with diverse scale-free network topologies by dynamic packet traffic simulation and theoretical network analysis. Topological differences of scale-free networks are evaluated by the degree-degree correlations that indicate topological tendency between the degree of a node and that of the nearest neighbors. Our simulation results quantitatively show that the NoC architecture constructed with the topology where hubs mostly connect to lower-degree nodes is found to achieve short latency and low packet loss ratio since it can disperse traffic load and avoid the extreme concentration of load on hubs.