Presenter: Min Yu,Lo

1. National Sun Yat-sen University Embedded System LaboratoryA Network on Chip Architecture and Design Methodology Presenter: Min Yu,Lo Kumar, S.; Jantsch, A.; Soininen, J.-P.; Forsell, M.; Millberg, M.; Oberg, J.; Tiensyrja, K.; Hemani, A.  VLSI, 2002. Proceedings. IEEE Computer Society Annual Symposium on 

2. Abstract We propose a packet switched platform for single chip systems which scales well to an arbitrary number of processor like resources. The platform, which we call Network-on-Chip (NOC), includes both the architecture and the design methodology. The NOC architecture is a m × n mesh of switches and resources are placed on the slots formed by the switches. We assume a direct layout of the 2-D mesh of switches and resources providing physical- architectural level design integration. Each switch is connected to one resource and four neighboring switches, and each resource is connected to one switch. A resource can be a processor core, memory, an FPGA, a custom hardware block or any other intellectual property (IP) block, which fits into the available slot and complies with the interface of the NOC. The NOC architecture essentially is the on chip communication infrastructure comprising the physical layer, the data link layer and the network layer of the OSI protocol stack.

3. Abstract(cont.) We define the concept of a region, which occupies an area of any number of resources and switches. This concept allows the NOC to accommodate large resources such as large memory banks, FPGA areas, or special purpose computation resources such as high performance multi-processors. The NOC design methodology consists of two phases. In the first phase a concrete architecture is derived from the general NOC template. The concrete architecture defines the number of switches and shape of the network, the kind and shape of regions and the number and kind of resources. The second phase maps the application onto the concrete architecture to form a concrete product.

4. What’s problem • Single processors will not be able to utilize the transistors of an entire chip. Single synchronous clock regions will span only a small fraction of the chip area • Applications will be modeled as a large number of communicating tasks. The different tasks may have very different characteristics and origins. This will make a heterogeneous implementation with different kind of resources for different tasks the most cost effective solution.

5. Related work IP-Centric Methodology and Design with the SpecC Language [5] Platform Tuning for Embedded Systems Design [6] Communication infrastructure [11,8,9] On chip communication reference OSI [12,10,13] IP interface design and system verification Propose reuse system architecture platform design methodology Network on chip Globally Asynchronous Locallly Synchronous [16] System Level Design: Orthogonolization of Concerns and Platform-Based Design [7] Communication centric Plarform developed [8,9,10] architectural,platform and methodologies System Level Design This Paper

6. Proposal method • Network on Chip(NOC) architecture • Develop communication infrastructure • Backbone-Platform-System Methodology • Platform development • Application mapping

7. Network on Chip architecture • Proposed CLICHÉ NOC architecture • RNI(Resource Network Interface) • Switch • Resource

8. Network on Chip architecture • Switch component • Each switch is connected to four other neighboring switches through input and output channels. • A switch consisting of mux,queue…

9. Network on Chip architecture • Resource component • The resource can be a combination of all previous types. • Since the area of resource equals one synchronous clock domain. • RNI component • Physical layer • Data-link layer • Network layer • Transport layer

10. Backbone-Platform-System Methodology • The idea with the BPS is to encapsulate the design work into reusable platform • BPS has two main phases : • Platform development • Application mapping

11. Backbone-Platform-System Methodology • Backbone design • Platform design • System design • Methods and tools

12. Experiment resault • Used a homogeneous 5 x 5 NOC architecture for our simulation experiments.

13. Other NOC architecture (1) 2-D Torus architecture (2) Folded Torus architecture

14. Conclusions and Comments • Conclusions • The NOC concept has been necessitated by three factors: • First there is the increasing demand of on-chip interconnect bandwidth. • The second equally crucial factor is to amortize the enormous engineering cost involved in designing such large chips over multiple applications. • The third factor is demand for easy-to-use methods to exploit the parallel processing capacity provided by multiple computational resources. • My Comments • This paper proposed NOC design methodology, I multicore interconnection study for the future is helpful.