Dedicated ssr pipeline stage of router for express traversal (extra) noc

An Express Traversal (EXTRA) Network on Chip (NoC) comprising a plurality of EXTRA routers, the EXTRA NoC comprising:

• a buffer write and route computation (BW/RC) pipeline configured to write an incoming flit to an input buffer of a start EXTRA router and compute a route for the incoming head flit by selecting an output port to depart from the start EXTRA router;
• a switch allocation-local (SA-L) pipeline configured to arbitrate the start EXTRA router to choose an input port and an output port for a winning flit;
• a setup request (SR) pipeline configured to handle transmission of a plurality of SR signals from the start EXTRA router to downstream EXTRA routers;
• a switch allocation-global (SA-G) pipeline configured to arbitrate a buffer write enable (BWena), a bypass mux (BMsel), and a crossbar select signal (XBsel) based on the SR signals received from the start EXTRA router to build an express path for the winning flit;
• a switch traversal and link traversal (ST/LT) pipeline configured to traverse the winning flit to the selected output port of the start EXTRA router and transmit the winning flit to a destination EXTRA router bypassing at least one EXTRA router between the start EXTRA router and destination EXTRA router.