Design of a multicast router for network-on-chip architectures with irregular topologies

As chip complexity keeps increasing in system-on-chip (SoC), the on-chip interconnect has become a critical issue for large-scale chip design.It has been proposed that the packet-switched network exchanging messages between intellectual property (IP) cores is a viable solution for the SoC interconnect problem.The design of the router in such network-on-chip (NoC) architectures is the key to high-performance communication for the IP cores in SoC. In this paper, we present the design and implementation of a multicast router for NoC with irregular topologies.The router employs our previously proposed tree-based routing algorithm for irregular networks.Our experiment results show that the multicast router has a slightly lower clock rate and moderately larger chip area than the unicast router in NoC.Since multicasting is a technique providing superior network performance, especially for large networks, such multicast router design is an effective routing solution for large-scale network-on-chip architectures

Quarc: an architecture for efficient on-chip communication

The exponential downscaling of the feature size has enforced a paradigm shift from computation-based design to communication-based design in system on chip development. Buses, the traditional communication architecture in systems on chip, are incapable of addressing the increasing bandwidth requirements of future large systems. Networks on chip have emerged as an interconnection architecture offering unique solutions to the technological and design issues related to communication in future systems on chip. The transition from buses as a shared medium to networks on chip as a segmented medium has given rise to new challenges in system on chip realm. By leveraging the shared nature of the communication medium, buses have been highly efficient in delivering multicast communication. The segmented nature of networks, however, inhibits the multicast messages to be delivered as efficiently by networks on chip. Relying on extensive research on multicast communication in parallel computers, several network on chip architectures have offered mechanisms to perform the operation, while conforming to resource constraints of the network on chip paradigm. Multicast communication in majority of these networks on chip is implemented by establishing a connection between source and all multicast destinations before the message transmission commences. Establishing the connections incurs an overhead and, therefore, is not desirable; in particular in latency sensitive services such as cache coherence. To address high performance multicast communication, this research presents Quarc, a novel network on chip architecture. The Quarc architecture targets an area-efficient, low power, high performance implementation. The thesis covers a detailed representation of the building blocks of the architecture, including topology, router and network interface. The cost and performance comparison of the Quarc architecture against other network on chip architectures reveals that the Quarc architecture is a highly efficient architecture. Moreover, the thesis introduces novel performance models of complex traffic patterns, including multicast and quality of service-aware communication

Network-on-Chip

Addresses the Challenges Associated with System-on-Chip Integration Network-on-Chip: The Next Generation of System-on-Chip Integration examines the current issues restricting chip-on-chip communication efficiency, and explores Network-on-chip (NoC), a promising alternative that equips designers with the capability to produce a scalable, reusable, and high-performance communication backbone by allowing for the integration of a large number of cores on a single system-on-chip (SoC). This book provides a basic overview of topics associated with NoC-based design: communication infrastructure design, communication methodology, evaluation framework, and mapping of applications onto NoC. It details the design and evaluation of different proposed NoC structures, low-power techniques, signal integrity and reliability issues, application mapping, testing, and future trends. Utilizing examples of chips that have been implemented in industry and academia, this text presents the full architectural design of components verified through implementation in industrial CAD tools. It describes NoC research and developments, incorporates theoretical proofs strengthening the analysis procedures, and includes algorithms used in NoC design and synthesis. In addition, it considers other upcoming NoC issues, such as low-power NoC design, signal integrity issues, NoC testing, reconfiguration, synthesis, and 3-D NoC design. This text comprises 12 chapters and covers: The evolution of NoC from SoC—its research and developmental challenges NoC protocols, elaborating flow control, available network topologies, routing mechanisms, fault tolerance, quality-of-service support, and the design of network interfaces The router design strategies followed in NoCs The evaluation mechanism of NoC architectures The application mapping strategies followed in NoCs Low-power design techniques specifically followed in NoCs The signal integrity and reliability issues of NoC The details of NoC testing strategies reported so far The problem of synthesizing application-specific NoCs Reconfigurable NoC design issues Direction of future research and development in the field of NoC Network-on-Chip: The Next Generation of System-on-Chip Integration covers the basic topics, technology, and future trends relevant to NoC-based design, and can be used by engineers, students, and researchers and other industry professionals interested in computer architecture, embedded systems, and parallel/distributed systems

Scalability of broadcast performance in wireless network-on-chip

Networks-on-Chip (NoCs) are currently the paradigm of choice to interconnect the cores of a chip multiprocessor. However, conventional NoCs may not suffice to fulfill the on-chip communication requirements of processors with hundreds or thousands of cores. The main reason is that the performance of such networks drops as the number of cores grows, especially in the presence of multicast and broadcast traffic. This not only limits the scalability of current multiprocessor architectures, but also sets a performance wall that prevents the development of architectures that generate moderate-to-high levels of multicast. In this paper, a Wireless Network-on-Chip (WNoC) where all cores share a single broadband channel is presented. Such design is conceived to provide low latency and ordered delivery for multicast/broadcast traffic, in an attempt to complement a wireline NoC that will transport the rest of communication flows. To assess the feasibility of this approach, the network performance of WNoC is analyzed as a function of the system size and the channel capacity, and then compared to that of wireline NoCs with embedded multicast support. Based on this evaluation, preliminary results on the potential performance of the proposed hybrid scheme are provided, together with guidelines for the design of MAC protocols for WNoC.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Performance Evaluation and Design Tradeoffs of On-Chip Interconnect Architectures

Network-on-Chip (NoC) has been proposed as an alternative to bus-based schemes to achieve high performance and scalability in System-on-Chip (SoC) design. Performance analysis and evaluation of on-chip interconnect architectures are widely based on simulations, which become computationally expensive, especially for large-scale NoCs. In this paper, a Network Calculusbased methodology is presented to analyze and evaluate the performance and cost metrics, such as latency and energy consumption. The 2D Mesh, Spidergong and WK-recursive on-chip interconnect architectures are analyzed using this methodology and results are compared with those produced using simulations. The values obtained by simulations and by analysis show similar trends in the same order of magnitude. Furthermore, WK outperforms the other on-chip interconnects in all considered metric

In-package wireless communication with TSV-based antenna

Network-on-Chip (NoC) has been shown to be the most viable alternative to an interconnect bus for the scalability of the system [1]. On-chip antennas, implementing wireless interconnects, are introduced for improved scalability of NoCs in [2]. On-chip wireless links offer improved network performance due to long distance communication, additional bandwidth, and broadcasting capabilities of antennas. The most prominent on-chip antenna designs are the planar logperiodic and meander which have a surface-propagation of the EM waves of the antenna. The main detriment of these antennas, and surface-propagation in general, is the poor signal attenuation (i.e. path loss) even at small distances of 5mm. This work challenges the on-chip antenna design conventions, and pushes toward a Through-Silicon Via (TSV)- based antenna design called TSV_A that establishes wireless communication through the silicon substrate medium with only a 3 dB loss over a 30mm on-chip distance

Network-on-Chip

Limitations of bus-based interconnections related to scalability, latency, bandwidth, and power consumption for supporting the related huge number of on-chip resources result in a communication bottleneck. These challenges can be efficiently addressed with the implementation of a network-on-chip (NoC) system. This book gives a detailed analysis of various on-chip communication architectures and covers different areas of NoCs such as potentials, architecture, technical challenges, optimization, design explorations, and research directions. In addition, it discusses current and future trends that could make an impactful and meaningful contribution to the research and design of on-chip communications and NoC systems

Pulsar: Design and Simulation Methodology for Dynamic Bandwidth Allocation in Photonic Network-on-Chip Architectures in Heterogeneous Multicore Systems

As the computing industry moved toward faster and more energy-efficient solutions, multicore computers proved to be dependable. Soon after, the Network-on-Chip (NoC) paradigm made headway as an effective method of connecting multiple cores on a single chip. These on-chip networks have been used to relay communication between homogeneous and heterogeneous sets of cores and core clusters. However, the variation in bandwidth requirements of heterogeneous systems is often neglected. Therefore, at a given moment, bandwidth may be in excess at one node while it is insufficient at another leading to lower performance and higher energy costs. This work proposes and examines dynamic schemes for the allocation of photonic channels in a Photonic Network-on-Chip (PNoC) as an alternative to their static-provision counterparts and proposes a method of simulating and selecting the characteristics of a dynamic system at the time of design as to achieve maximum system performance in a Photonic Network-on-Chip for a given application type