Networks On Chips

The design of today's semiconductor chips for various applications, such as telecommunications, poses various challenges due to the complexity of these systems. These highly complex systems-on-chips demand new approaches to connect and manage the communication between on-chip processing and storage components and networks on chips (NoCs) provide a powerful solution. This book is the first to provide a unified overview of NoC technology. It includes in-depth analysis of all the on-chip communication challenges, from physical wiring implementation up to software architecture, and a complete classification of their various Network-on-Chip approaches and solutions. * Leading-edge research from world-renowned experts in academia and industry with state-of-the-art technology implementations/trends * An integrated presentation not currently available in any other book * A thorough introduction to current design methodologies and chips designed with NoCs

The implementation of networks-on-chip (NoC) technology in VLSI integration presents a variety of unique challenges. To deal with specific design solutions and research hurdles related to intra-chip data exchange, engineers are challenged to invoke a wide range of disciplines and specializations while maintaining a focused approach. Leading Researchers Present Cutting-Edge Designs Tools Networks-on-Chips: Theory and Practice facilitates this process, detailing the NoC paradigm and its benefits in separating IP design and functionality from chip communication requirements and interfacing. It starts with an analysis of 3-D NoC architectures and progresses to a discussion of NoC resource allocation, processor traffic modeling, and formal verification, with an examination of protocols at different layers of abstraction. An exploration of design methodologies, CAD tool development, and system testing, as well as communication protocol, the text highlights important emerging research issues, such as Resource Allocation for Quality of Service (QoS) on-chip communication Testing, verification, and network design methodologies Architectures for interconnection, real-time monitoring, and security requirements Networks-on-Chip Protocols Presents a flexible MPSoC platform to easily implement multimedia applications and evaluate future video encoding standards This useful guide tackles power and energy issues in NoC-based designs, addressing the power constraints that currently limit the embedding of more processing elements on a single chip. It covers traffic modeling and discusses the details of traffic generators. Using unique case studies and examples, it covers theoretical and practical issues, guiding readers through every phase of system design.

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.

[2]. The Cell Processor from Sony, Toshiba and IBM (STI) [3], and the Sun UltraSPARC T1 (formerly codenamed Niagara) [4] signal the growing popularity of such systems. Furthermore, Intel’s very recently announced 80-core TeraFLOP chip [5] exemplifies the irreversible march toward many-core systems with tens or even hundreds of processing elements. 1.2 The Dawn of the Communication-Centric Revolution The multi-core thrust has ushered the gradual displacement of the computati- centric design model by a more communication-centric approach [6]. The large, sophisticated monolithic modules are giving way to several smaller, simpler p- cessing elements working in tandem. This trend has led to a surge in the popularity of multi-core systems, which typically manifest themselves in two distinct incarnations: heterogeneous Multi-Processor Systems-on-Chip (MPSoC) and homogeneous Chip Multi-Processors (CMP). The SoC philosophy revolves around the technique of Platform-Based Design (PBD) [7], which advocates the reuse of Intellectual Property (IP) cores in flexible design templates that can be customized accordingly to satisfy the demands of particular implementations. The appeal of such a modular approach lies in the substantially reduced Time-To- Market (TTM) incubation period, which is a direct outcome of lower circuit complexity and reduced design effort. The whole system can now be viewed as a diverse collection of pre-existing IP components integrated on a single die.

This book provides a single-source reference to routing algorithms for Networks-on-Chip (NoCs), as well as in-depth discussions of advanced solutions applied to current and next generation, many core NoC-based Systems-on-Chip (SoCs). After a basic introduction to the NoC design paradigm and architectures, routing algorithms for NoC architectures are presented and discussed at all abstraction levels, from the algorithmic level to actual implementation. Coverage emphasizes the role played by the routing algorithm and is organized around key problems affecting current and next generation, many-core SoCs. A selection of routing algorithms is included, specifically designed to address key issues faced by designers in the ultra-deep sub-micron (UDSM) era, including performance improvement, power, energy, and thermal issues, fault tolerance and reliability.

This book targets engineers and researchers familiar with basic computer architecture concepts who are interested in learning about on-chip networks. This work is designed to be a short synthesis of the most critical concepts in on-chip network design. It is a resource for both understanding on-chip network basics and for providing an overview of state of the-art research in on-chip networks. We believe that an overview that teaches both fundamental concepts and highlights state-of-the-art designs will be of great value to both graduate students and industry engineers. While not an exhaustive text, we hope to illuminate fundamental concepts for the reader as well as identify trends and gaps in on-chip network research. With the rapid advances in this field, we felt it was timely to update and review the state of the art in this second edition. We introduce two new chapters at the end of the book. We have updated the latest research of the past years throughout the book and also expanded our coverage of fundamental concepts to include several research ideas that have now made their way into products and, in our opinion, should be textbook concepts that all on-chip network practitioners should know. For example, these fundamental concepts include message passing, multicast routing, and bubble flow control schemes.

As the number of processor cores and IP blocks integrated on a single chip is steadily growing, a systematic approach to design the communication infrastructure becomes necessary. Different variants of packed switched on-chip networks have been proposed by several groups during the past two years. This book summarizes the state of the art of these efforts and discusses the major issues from the physical integration to architecture to operating systems and application interfaces. It also provides a guideline and vision about the direction this field is moving to. Moreover, the book outlines the consequences of adopting design platforms based on packet switched network. The consequences may in fact be far reaching because many of the topics of distributed systems, distributed real-time systems, fault tolerant systems, parallel computer architecture, parallel programming as well as traditional system-on-chip issues will appear relevant but within the constraints of a single chip VLSI implementation.

Over the past decade, system-on-chip (SoC) designs have evolved to address the ever increasing complexity of applications, fueled by the era of digital convergence. Improvements in process technology have effectively shrunk board-level components so they can be integrated on a single chip. New on-chip communication architectures have been designed to support all inter-component communication in a SoC design. These communication architecture fabrics have a critical impact on the power consumption, performance, cost and design cycle time of modern SoC designs. As application complexity strains the communication backbone of SoC designs, academic and industrial R&D efforts and dollars are increasingly focused on communication architecture design. On-Chip Communication Architecures is a comprehensive reference on concepts, research and trends in on-chip communication architecture design. It will provide readers with a comprehensive survey, not available elsewhere, of all current standards for on-chip communication architectures. A definitive guide to on-chip communication architectures, explaining key concepts, surveying research efforts and predicting future trends Detailed analysis of all popular standards for on-chip communication architectures Comprehensive survey of all research on communication architectures, covering a wide range of topics relevant to this area, spanning the past several years, and up to date with the most current research efforts Future trends that with have a significant impact on research and design of communication architectures over the next several years