Runtime Packet-Dropping Detection of Faulty Nodes in Network-on-Chip

Abstract

Due to the impact of ongoing deep sub-micron technology, billions of transistors are crammed in an integrated circuit to combine multiple systems on a single chip. Network-on-Chip (NoC) has become the communication infrastructure among these systems’ components. On the other hand, scaling down the feature size has increased the probability of faults which could be experienced in runtime. Therefore, online fault detection is considered in the system design. This paper presents an efficient method to detect and avoid faulty nodes that silently discard packets from the network. This method deals with control faults of the NoC routers, where the packets are received but are not saved in the buffers. In this work, a high level fault model is proposed. Also, a detection technique and fault tolerant method is presented. The proposed scheme is analyzed and evaluated. The results show 3.91%, 9.97%, and 8.82% overhead in area, power, and performance, respectively, while guaranteeing packet delivery to the destination.