Toggle Main Menu Toggle Search

Open Access padlockePrints

Modelling and Tools for Power Supply Variations Analysis in Networks-on-Chip

Lookup NU author(s): Nizar Dahir, Dr Terrence Mak, Dr Fei Xia, Professor Alex Yakovlev

Downloads


Licence

This is the authors' accepted manuscript of an article that has been published in its final definitive form by IEEE , 2014.

For re-use rights please refer to the publisher's terms and conditions.


Abstract

Power supply integrity has become a critical concern with the rapid shrinking feature size and the ever increasing power consumption in nanometre scale integration. In particular, on-chip communication in platforms such as networks-on-chip (NoC) dictates the power dissipation and overall system performance in multicore systems and embedded computing architectures. These architectures require a dedicated tool for analyzing the power supply noise which must embed distinctive communication characteristics and spatial parameters. In this paper, we present a tool dedicated to determining the on-chip V-DD drops due to communication workload in NoCs. This tool integrates a fast power grid model, an NoC simulator, an on-chip link model, and a microarchitectural power model for router. The model has been rigorously verified using SPICE simulations. The proposed model and tools are further exemplified through analyzing the impact of power supply noise for NoC links. Statistical timing analysis of NoC links in the presence of power supply noise was performed to evaluate the bit error rates (BERs). This work would enable better understanding of the tradeoffs existing in the design of NoCs, and the induced power supply noise due to on-chip communication. This understanding is crucial for the analysis of the quality of service (QoS) of communication fabrics in NoCs at the early design stages.


Publication metadata

Author(s): Dahir NS, Mak T, Xia F, Yakovlev A

Publication type: Article

Publication status: Published

Journal: IEEE Transactions on Computers

Year: 2014

Volume: 63

Issue: 3

Pages: 679-690

Print publication date: 01/03/2014

Date deposited: 01/06/2015

ISSN (print): 0018-9340

ISSN (electronic): 1557-9956

Publisher: IEEE

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TC.2012.272

DOI: 10.1109/TC.2012.272


Altmetrics

Altmetrics provided by Altmetric


Share