Minimizing virtual channel buffer for network-on-chip

A novel method to optimize the number of virtual channel buffers is proposed in this paper. More precisely, given the application task graph of a specific application, an ACO (Ant Colony Optimization) algorithm is used during the mapping of tasks to the NoC (Network-on-Chip) such that the number of virtual channel buffers is minimized. The benefit of our method is evaluated by simulation and the simulation results show that our method can achieve 33% reduction in the number of virtual channel buffers compared to the state-of-art method.