Architecture and design flow for a debug event distribution interconnect

Abstract

In this paper, we describe and analyze the architecture of the proposed Debug Event Distribution Interconnect (EDI). The EDI transmits debug events, which are 1-bit signals, between debug entities in different areas of the Network-on-Chip based Multi-Processor System-on-Chip. The EDI replicates the NoC topology with an EDI node instantiated for each underlying NoC data module. Contention in the EDI node is handled by replicating the EDI in layers. The EDI generation is automatic, and uses as input the cross-triggering patterns that are not required to follow the communication patterns in the NoC. The generation and routing tool is also presented in this paper. The EDI is evaluated with four different implementations varying complexity and handling of contention. The area of a single EDI Layer is around 0.9% of the area occupied by the tested NoCs, using the lower area implementation. These results show that the proposed implementation of the EDI incurs low cost on the overall system.