Patent ID: 8213298

Claim:
A path selecting device which selects a path, from among a plurality of paths for transmitting data from a transmission bus master to a reception bus master through NoC (Network-on-Chip) routers located on the plurality of paths, said path selecting device comprising: a path information generating unit configured to generate path information identifying each path of the plurality of paths for transmitting the data from the transmission bus master to the reception bus master, each path identified by the generated path information including at least one NoC router, of the NoC routers, determined to be a candidate for monitoring; a path malfunction predicting unit configured to (i) collect, for each respective NoC router determined to be the candidate for monitoring, a number of flows as a malfunction occurrence probability value representing a likelihood of a malfunction on the respective NoC router, the malfunction including a degradation in transmission quality and an increase in load of the respective NoC router, and each flow of the flows collected for each respective NoC router determined to be the candidate for monitoring being a sequence of one or more flits to be transmitted from a predetermined transmission source to a predetermined destination by the respective NoC router determined to be the candidate for monitoring, and (ii) predict the malfunction on each respective NoC router determined to be the candidate for monitoring, using the collected malfunction occurrence probability value; and a bypass path selecting unit configured to (i), when said path malfunction predicting unit predicts the malfunction on the at least one NoC router that is determined to be the candidate for monitoring on one of the paths identified by the generated path information, exclude the path including the NoC router for which the malfunction is predicted, and (ii) select, from among the paths identified by the generated path information, a path other than the excluded path to be used for transmitting the data from the transmission bus master to the reception bus master.