DDRNoC: Dual Data-Rate Network-on-Chip
Journal article, 2018

This article introduces DDRNoC, an on-chip interconnection network capable of routing packets at Dual Data Rate. The cycle time of current 2D-mesh Network-on-Chip routers is limited by their control as opposed to the datapath (switch and link traversal), which exhibits significant slack. DDRNoC capitalizes on this observation, allowing two flits per cycle to share the same datapath. Thereby, DDRNoC achieves higher throughput than a Single Data Rate (SDR) network. Alternatively, using lower voltage circuits, the above slack can be exploited to reduce power consumption while matching the SDR network throughput. In addition, DDRNoC exhibits reduced clock distribution power, improving energy efficiency, as it needs a slower clock than a SDR network that routes packets at the same rate. Post place and route results in 28nm technology show that, compared to an iso-voltage (1.1V) SDR network, DDRNoC improves throughput proportionally to the SDR datapath slack. Moreover, a low-voltage (0.95V) DDRNoC implementation converts that slack to power reduction offering the 1.1V SDR throughput at a substantially lower energy cost.

On-chip-interconnect

Author

Ahsen Ejaz

Chalmers, Computer Science and Engineering (Chalmers), Computer Engineering (Chalmers)

Vasileios Papaefstathiou

Chalmers, Computer Science and Engineering (Chalmers), Computer Engineering (Chalmers)

Ioannis Sourdis

Chalmers, Computer Science and Engineering (Chalmers), Computer Engineering (Chalmers)

Transactions on Architecture and Code Optimization

1544-3566 (ISSN) 1544-3973 (eISSN)

Vol. 15 2 25

Energy-efficient Heterogeneous COmputing at exaSCALE (ECOSCALE)

European Commission (EC) (EC/H2020/671632), 2015-10-01 -- 2018-12-31.

Subject Categories

Telecommunications

Communication Systems

Other Electrical Engineering, Electronic Engineering, Information Engineering

DOI

10.1145/3200201

More information

Latest update

3/2/2022 3