Paper Info
Title
Networks-on-Chip for FPGAs: Hard, Soft or Mixed?
Abstract
As FPGA capacity increases, a growing challenge is connecting ever-more components with the current low-level FPGA interconnect while keeping designers productive and on-chip communication efficient. We propose augmenting FPGAs with networks-on-chip (NoCs) to simplify design, and we show that this can be done while maintaining or even improving silicon efficiency. We compare the area and speed efficiency of each NoC component when implemented hard versus soft to explore the space and inform our design choices. We then build on this component-level analysis to architect hard NoCs and integrate them into the FPGA fabric; these NoCs are on average 20--23× smaller and 5--6× faster than soft NoCs. A 64-node hard NoC uses only ∼2% of an FPGA's silicon area and metallization. We introduce a new communication efficiency metric: silicon area required per realized communication bandwidth. Soft NoCs consume 4960 mm2/TBps, but hard NoCs are 84× more efficient at 59 mm2/TBps. Informed design can further reduce the area overhead of NoCs to 23 mm2/TBps, which is only 2.6× less efficient than the simplest point-to-point soft links (9 mm2/TBps). Despite this almost comparable efficiency, NoCs can switch data across the entire FPGA while point-to-point links are very limited in capability; therefore, hard NoCs are expected to improve FPGA efficiency for more complex styles of communication.
Year
DOI
Venue
2014
10.1145/2629442
TRETS
Keywords
Field
DocType
area,design,delay,hard,application-specific integrated circuit,interconnect,soft,types and design styles,field programmable gate array,resource management,measurement,network-on-chip,performance,application specific integrated circuit,network on chip
Fpga interconnect,Resource management,Computer science,Parallel computing,Field-programmable gate array,Network on a chip,Application-specific integrated circuit,Real-time computing,Communication bandwidth,Interconnection,Embedded system
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
7
3
1936-7406
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
11
0.65
17
Authors
2
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Mohamed S. Abdelfattah114413.65
Vaughn Betz21796134.71