A Metaheuristic Scheduler for Time Division Multiplexed Network-on-Chip

This report presents a metaheuristic scheduler for inter-processor communication in multi-core platforms using time division multiplexed (TDM) networks on chip (NOC). Input to the scheduler is a specification of the target multi-core platform and a specification of the application. Compared to previous works, the scheduler handles a broader and more general class of platforms.

Another contribution, which has significant practical implications, is the minimization of the TDM schedule period by over-provisioning bandwidth to connections with the smallest bandwidth requirements. Our results show that this is possible with only negligible impact on the schedule period.

We evaluate the scheduler with seven different applications from the MCSL NOC benchmark suite. We observe that the metaheuristics perform better than the greedy solution. In the special case of all-to-all communication with equal bandwidths on all communication channels, we obtain schedules with a shorter period than reported in previous work.