Abstract: A mechanism of deadlock detection and recovery for networks on chip (NoC) which makes use of topological order was proposed. It uses  the characteristics of NoC, which has enough wire sources to use dedicated wires to achieve and analyze the dependence of the channels to locate the positions of deadlocks quickly, and then unlocks the deadlock loops. This mechanism is simple and effective, and it supports various routing algorithms. Compared to deadlock avoiding, it can raise the availability of network resources and increase the tolerance ability.

Key words: networks on chip, topological order, deadlock detection, deadlock recovery