Analytical approach to massively parallel architectures for nanotechnologies

Abstract

In the emerging field of single-chip multiprocessors (CMP), analytical models of performance and power consumption are necessary for design space exploration and the analysis of existing architectures. In the light of ever decreasing structure sizes in microchips the scalability of proposed CMPs is of great interest to the developers. Looking even further into the future at the possibilities offered by, e. g., nanotechnology, a set of such models may help to identify promising architectures and possible bottlenecks even before the enabling technologies exist. In this paper, we present our current work in this area in the form of two models. The first and very basic model is based on Amdahl's law and gives a first promising outlook on chip multiprocessing. Based on the more complex BSP model, our second model takes the on-chip communication into account and thus allows a much more detailed look at the architecture. In both cases, basic laws of circuit technology have been combined with the underlying models that now take the effects of device scaling into account. Later, we also present the GigaNetIC architecture, a CMP developed by our research group. It was then analyzed by applying the BSP-based model.