Networks-on-Chip Architecture Customization using Network Partitioning: A System-Level Performance Evaluation

In many-core Networks-on-Chip (NoC) systems, two topics have recently been researched; NoC clustering and NoC simulation. NoC clustering investigates grouping processing elements (PEs) based on common characteristics between them, like spatial locality or communication patterns. Research showed that NoC clustering achieved better performance and load balancing. Furthermore, it allows scalability of the NoC grid. The other topic, NoC simulation, provides tools for early evaluation of NoC systems. This allowed easy investigation of NoC systems with large number of PEs. Plenty of research has been done in both topics separately. In this paper, we try to fill the gap. We extend an existing NoC simulation tool by adding support for simulating NoC clusters and inter-NoC traffic. The presented NoC clustering simulator supports the modular design technique, which in turn offers the flexibility in configuring cluster parameters. Examples of configurable parameters that are supported by our modified simulator are: adding interconnection topologies to configure how the NoC entities are connected with each other, adding a cluster manager that maps tasks to NoC entities based on the inter-NoC communication pattern, adding latency factors of cluster links in the case of inter-NoC traffic, and adapting the routing algorithm for both inter-cluster and intra-cluster traffic. A clustered NoC simulation case study shows the effectiveness of the modifications made to the simulator. For example, a certain NoC setup is simulated twice, initially non-clustered then clustered, using the added features. Collected data shows that the average clustered NoC routers' energy consumption is 50% lower than the consumption in the non-clustered case.

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Networks-on-Chip Interfacing: NoC-based Systems Networking and Inter-NoC Communication

Hassan¹

2017

IJCDS

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Many-and multi-core Networks-on-Chip (NoC) systems have a large spectrum of applications, and one of these applications is High Performance Computing (HPC). In HPC application, system scalability is one of the important features of a given HPC platform. Two of the factors governing scalability are the interfacing link speed and the ease of deploying additional processing nodes. For NoC-based systems, scalability has two meanings; intra-NoC scalability, which includes partitioning and clustering Processing Elements (PEs) to achieve better performance, and inter-NoC scalability, which includes interfacing with other NoC-based systems via inter-NoC links and creating a newtrok of multiple NoC-based systems. In this paper, we investigate the case of inter-NoC communication between a network of NoC-based systems. By using our simulator, we found out that treating a network of NoC-based systems as a generic case of interfacing yields non-optimal performance. To target the inter-NoC communication performance, we introduce NoC 2 , an NoC-based system with an Ethernet communication manager that provides better management for inter-NoC traffic. Current implementations of inter-NoC traffic management handle inter-NoC traffic using software running on top of a dedicated PE, whereas NoC 2 is designed so that the software running on cores within the NoC is completely abstracted from inter-NoC traffic management. Experiments show that this kind of abstraction has better inter-NoC communication performance over generic NoC interfaced via Ethernet. Results suggest that NoC 2 would perform better when it comes to scaling NoC-based systems by interfacing more NoC-based hardware.

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Networks-on-Chip Architecture Customization using Network Partitioning: A System-Level Performance Evaluation

Cited by 3 publications

References 60 publications

Impact of Non-Uniform Subnets on the Performance of Wireless Network-on-Chip Architectures

Impact of Non-Uniform Subnets on the Performance of Wireless Network-on-Chip Architectures

Clustered Networks-on-Chip: Simulation and Performance Evaluation

Networks-on-Chip Interfacing: NoC-based Systems Networking and Inter-NoC Communication

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