Title
Approaching the theoretical limits of a mesh NoC with a 16-node chip prototype in 45nm SOI
Abstract
In this paper, we present a case study of our chip prototype of a 16-node 4x4 mesh NoC fabricated in 45nm SOI CMOS that aims to simultaneously optimize energy-latency-throughput for unicasts, multicasts and broadcasts. We first define and analyze the theoretical limits of a mesh NoC in latency, throughput and energy, then describe how we approach these limits through a combination of microarchitecture and circuit techniques. Our 1.1V 1GHz NoC chip achieves 1-cycle router-and-link latency at each hop and energy-efficient router-level multicast support, delivering 892Gb/s (87.1% of the theoretical bandwidth limit) at 531.4mW for a mixed traffic of unicasts and broadcasts. Through this fabrication, we derive insights that help guide our research, and we believe, will also be useful to the NoC and multicore research community.
Year
DOI
Venue
2012
10.1145/2228360.2228431
DAC
Keywords
Field
DocType
Network-on-Chip, Theoretical Mesh Limits, Virtual Bypassing, Multicast Optimization, Low-Swing Signaling, Chip Prototype
Computer science,Network on a chip,CMOS,Chip,Multicast,Throughput,Unicast,Multi-core processor,Microarchitecture,Embedded system
Conference
ISSN
Citations 
PageRank 
0738-100X
50
1.63
References 
Authors
0
6
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Sunghyun Park115410.83
Tushar Krishna2186486.95
Chia-Hsin Chen3501.97
Bhavya Daya4501.63
Anantha P. Chandrakasan5144421946.93
Li-Shiuan Peh65077398.57