Design a Dynamically Shared Buffer with Prefetching for Multiple Virtual Channel Network on Chip

Due to limited area and power budget in NoC design, DAMQ buffer is usually used to decrease buffer requirements, especially in NoC with multiple virtual channels. DAMQ-PF, a novel dynamically shared buffer schematic is proposed. In DAMQ-PF, multiple virtual channels dynamically share the same data buffer, and a small prefetching buffer is added and associated to the DAMQ to ensure high frequency and continuously buffer access. A dynamically credit based flow control strategy is also provided to ensure fair buffer allocation among all virtual channels, avoiding one virtual channel use up all the shared buffer without loss of high buffer utilization. Analyses and tests show that DAMQ-PF achieves high frequency, high throughput and high buffer utilization in NoC with less buffer resource, which meets the requirement of NoC very well.