Multipath Router Architectures to Reduce Latency in Network-on-Chips

The low latency is a prime concern for large Network-on-Chips (NoCs) typically used in chip-multiprocessors (CMPs) and multiprocessor system-on-chips (MPSoCs). A significant component of overall latency is the serialization delay for applications which have long packets such as typical video stream traffic. To address the serialization latency, we propose to exploit the inherent path diversity available in a typical 2-D Mesh with our two novel router architectures, Dual-path router and Dandelion router. We observe that, in a 2-D mesh, for any source-destination pair, there are two minimal paths along the edges of the bounding box. We call it XY Dimension Order Routing (DOR) and YX DOR. There are also two non-minimal paths which are non-coinciding and out of the bounding box created by XY and YX DOR paths. Dual-path Router implements two injection and two ejection ports for parallel packet injection through two minimal paths. Packets are split into two halves and injected simultaneously into the network. Dandelion router implements four injection and ejection ports for parallel packet injection. Packets are split into smaller sub-packets and are injected simultaneously in all possible directions which typically include two minimal paths and two non-minimal paths. When all the sub-packets reach the destination, they are eventually recombined. We find that our technique significantly increases the throughput and reduces the serialization latency and hence overall latency of long packets. We explore the impact of Dual-path and Dandelion on various packet lengths in order to prove the advantage of our routers over the baseline. We further implement different deadlock free disjoint path models for Dandelion and develop a switching mechanism between Dual-path and Dandelion based on the traffic congestion

Integrating simultaneous bi-direction signalling in the test fabric of 3D stacked integrated circuits.

Jennions, Ian K. - Associate SupervisorThe world has seen significant advancements in electronic devices’ capabilities, most notably the ability to embed ultra-large-scale functionalities in lightweight, area and power-efficient devices. There has been an enormous push towards quality and reliability in consumer electronics that have become an indispensable part of human life. Consequently, the tests conducted on these devices at the final stages before these are shipped out to the customers have a very high significance in the research community. However, researchers have always struggled to find a balance between the test time (hence the test cost) and the test overheads; unfortunately, these two are inversely proportional. On the other hand, the ever-increasing demand for more powerful and compact devices is now facing a new challenge. Historically, with the advancements in manufacturing technology, electronic devices witnessed miniaturizing at an exponential pace, as predicted by Moore’s law. However, further geometric or effective 2D scaling seems complicated due to performance and power concerns with smaller technology nodes. One promising way forward is by forming 3D Stacked Integrated Circuits (SICs), in which the individual dies are stacked vertically and interconnected using Through Silicon Vias (TSVs) before being packaged as a single chip. This allows more functionality to be embedded with a reduced footprint and addresses another critical problem being observed in 2D designs: increasingly long interconnects and latency issues. However, as more and more functionality is embedded into a small area, it becomes increasingly challenging to access the internal states (to observe or control) after the device is fabricated, which is essential for testing. This access is restricted by the limited number of Chip Terminals (IC pins and the vertical Through Silicon Vias) that a chip could be fitted with, the power consumption concerns, and the chip area overheads that could be allocated for testing. This research investigates Simultaneous Bi-Directional Signaling (SBS) for use in Test Access Mechanism (TAM) designs in 3D SICs. SBS enables chip terminals to simultaneously send and receive test vectors on a single Chip Terminal (CT), effectively doubling the per-pin efficiency, which could be translated into additional test channels for test time reduction or Chip Terminal reduction for resource efficiency. The research shows that SBS-based test access methods have significant potential in reducing test times and/or test resources compared to traditional approaches, thereby opening up new avenues towards cost-effectiveness and reliability of future electronics.PhD in Manufacturin