TY - JOUR
T1 - Optimized 3D Network-on-Chip design using simulated allocation
AU - Zhou, Pingqiang
AU - Yuh, Ping Hung
AU - Sapatnekar, Sachin S
PY - 2012/4
Y1 - 2012/4
N2 - Three-dimensional (3D) silicon integration technologies have provided new opportunities for Network-on-Chip (NoC) architecture design in Systems-on-Chip (SoCs). In this article, we consider the applicationspecific NoC architecture design problem in a 3D environment. We present an efficient floorplan-aware 3D NoC synthesis algorithm based on simulated allocation (SAL), a stochastic method for traffic flow routing, and accurate power and delay models for NoC components. We demonstrate that this method finds greatly improved solutions compared to a baseline algorithm reflecting prior work. To evaluate the SAL method, we compare its performance with the widely used simulated annealing (SA) method and show that SAL is much faster than SA for this application, while providing solutions of very similar quality. We then extend the approach from a single-path routing to a multipath routing scheme and explore the trade-off between power consumption and runtime for these two schemes. Finally, we study the impact of various factors on the network performance in 3D NoCs, including the TSV count and the number of 3D tiers. Our studies show that link power and delay can be significantly improved when moving from a 2D to a 3D implementation, but the improvement flattens out as the number of 3D tiers goes beyond a certain point.
AB - Three-dimensional (3D) silicon integration technologies have provided new opportunities for Network-on-Chip (NoC) architecture design in Systems-on-Chip (SoCs). In this article, we consider the applicationspecific NoC architecture design problem in a 3D environment. We present an efficient floorplan-aware 3D NoC synthesis algorithm based on simulated allocation (SAL), a stochastic method for traffic flow routing, and accurate power and delay models for NoC components. We demonstrate that this method finds greatly improved solutions compared to a baseline algorithm reflecting prior work. To evaluate the SAL method, we compare its performance with the widely used simulated annealing (SA) method and show that SAL is much faster than SA for this application, while providing solutions of very similar quality. We then extend the approach from a single-path routing to a multipath routing scheme and explore the trade-off between power consumption and runtime for these two schemes. Finally, we study the impact of various factors on the network performance in 3D NoCs, including the TSV count and the number of 3D tiers. Our studies show that link power and delay can be significantly improved when moving from a 2D to a 3D implementation, but the improvement flattens out as the number of 3D tiers goes beyond a certain point.
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U2 - 10.1145/2159542.2159544
DO - 10.1145/2159542.2159544
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84860306896
SN - 1084-4309
VL - 17
JO - ACM Transactions on Design Automation of Electronic Systems
JF - ACM Transactions on Design Automation of Electronic Systems
IS - 2
M1 - a12
ER -