Solutions for Real Chip Implementation Issues of NoC and Their Application to Memory-Centric NoC

Abstract

This paper describes real chip implementation issues of network-on-chip (NoC) and their solutions along with series of chip design examples. The solutions described in this paper cover both architectural aspects and circuit level techniques for practical chip implementation of NoC. As for architecture level solutions, topology selection, chip-aware protocol design, and on-chip serialization (OCS) for link area reduction are explained. For circuit level techniques, SERDES and synchronizer design, crossbar switch partial activation, and low-voltage link are presented as the foundations for power and area efficient NoC implementation. Regarding presented solutions for NoC implementation, this paper proposes memory centric NoC (MC-NoC) for homogeneous multi processor SoC (MPSoC). Flexibility and feasibility of task mapping on homogeneous SoC is the key feature of the MC-NoC. 8 dual port SRAMs connected to crossbar switches in hierarchical star topology network facilitate data communication between processors, regardless of task mapping into the MC-NoC. Experimental result obtained by mapping edge detection tasks on the MC-NoC in various configurations shows almost constant performance. This result proves the effectiveness of the proposed architecture. The MC-NoC based SoC is also implemented on TSMC 0.18 um process technology