A blocking probability study for the Aethereal network-on-chip

The Aethereal network-on-chip and its later varia­tions cover an important role in the on-chip communications field for their capability of ensuring deterministic delivery. This Aethereal feature is offered by the time-driven forward­ing operation, which however also introduces possible con­nection blocking in the system, i.e., a proper time schedule for a given flow cannot be find and hence the communication cannot be established. This paper investigates the blocking problem in the Aethereal network-on-chip, specifically con­sidering a scenario where reservations are performed at run-time. In particular, the paper presents and validates an analytical model to evaluate the blocking probability in the system and proposes a solution to mitigate the problem.