Samuel Rodrigo

Efficient implementation of distributed routing algorithms for NoCs

The design of NoCs for multi-core chips introduces new design constraints like power consumption, area, and ultra low latencies. Although 2D meshes are preferred, heterogeneous blocks, fabrication faults, reliability issues, and chip virtualization may lead to the need of irregular topologies or regions. In this situation, efficient routing becomes a challenge. Although the use of routing tables at switches is flexible, it does not scale in terms of latency and area due to its memory requirements. LBDR (logic-based distributed routing) is proposed as a new routing method that removes the need of using routing tables at all. LBDR enables the implementation of many routing algorithms on most of the practical topologies we might find in the near future in a multi-core system. From an initial topology and routing algorithm, a set of three bits per switch/output port is computed. Evaluation results show that, by using a small logic, LBDR mimics the performance of routing algorithms when implemented with routing tables, both in regular and irregular topologies.

Efficient unicast and multicast support for CMPs

Beyond a certain number of cores, multi-core processing chips will require a network-on-chip (NoC) to interconnect the cores and overcome the limitations of a bus. NoCs must be carefully designed to meet constraints like power consumption, area, and ultra low latencies. Although 2D meshes with DOR (dimension-order-routing) meet these constraints, the need for partitioning (e.g. virtual machines, coherency domains) and traffic isolation may prevent the use of DOR routing. Also, core heterogeneity and manufacturing and run-time faults may lead to partially irregular topologies. Routing in these topologies is complex, and previously proposed solutions required routing tables, which drastically increase power consumption, area, and latency. The exception is LBDR (logic-based distributed routing), a flexible routing method for irregular topologies that removes the need for using routing tables (both at end-nodes and switches), thus achieving large savings in chip area and power consumption. But LBDR lacks support for multicast and broadcast, which are required to efficiently support cache coherence protocols both for single and multiple coherence domains. In this paper we propose bLBDR, an efficient multicast and broadcast mechanism built on top of LBDR. bLBDR performs multicast operations using a logic-based broadcast within a domain (a region with bounds). This allows us to isolate the traffic into different domains, thus enabling the concept of visualization at the NoC level. Also, bLBDR extends the concept of routing regions in LBDR by providing a mechanism that allows the flexible definition of multiple domains, sets of network resources. bLBDR fulfills all the practical requirements, including not only low latency and power and area efficiency, but also support for visualization, partitionability, fault-tolerance, traffic isolation and broadcast across the entire network as well as constrained to coherency domains or regions. All this is achieved by a small and power efficient routing logic (7times area savings and 17times power reduction when compared to a routing table in an 8 times 8 mesh network).

Addressing Manufacturing Challenges with Cost-Efficient Fault Tolerant Routing

The high-performance computing domain is enriching with the inclusion of Networks-on-chip (NoCs) as a key component of many-core (CMPs or MPSoCs) architectures. NoCs face the communication scalability challenge while meeting tight power, area and latency constraints. Designers must address new challenges that were not present before. Defective components, the enhancement of application-level parallelism or power-aware techniques may break topology regularity, thus, efficient routing becomes a challenge.In this paper, uLBDR (Universal Logic-Based Distributed Routing) is proposed as an efficient logic-based mechanism that adapts to any irregular topology derived from 2D meshes, being an alternative to the use of routing tables (either at routers or at end-nodes). uLBDR requires a small set of configuration bits, thus being more practical than large routing tables implemented in memories. Several implementations of uLBDR are presented highlighting the trade-off between routing cost and coverage. The alternatives span from the previously proposed LBDR approach (with 30\% of coverage) to the uLBDR mechanism achieving full coverage. This comes with a small performance cost, thus exhibiting the trade-off between fault tolerance and performance.

An Efficient Implementation of Distributed Routing Algorithms for NoCs

The design of NoCs for multi-core chips introduces new design constraints like power consumption, area, and ultra low latencies. Although 2D meshes are preferred, heterogeneous blocks, fabrication faults, reliability issues, and chip virtualization may lead to the need of irregular topologies or regions. In this situation, efficient routing becomes a challenge. Although the use of routing tables at switches is flexible, it does not scale in terms of latency and area due to its memory requirements. LBDR (logic-based distributed routing) is proposed as a new routing method that removes the need of using routing tables at all. LBDR enables the implementation of many routing algorithms on most of the practical topologies we might find in the near future in a multi-core system. From an initial topology and routing algorithm, a set of three bits per switch/output port is computed. Evaluation results show that, by using a small logic, LBDR mimics the performance of routing algorithms when implemented with routing tables, both in regular and irregular topologies.

Cost-Efficient On-Chip Routing Implementations for CMP and MPSoC Systems

The high-performance computing domain is enriching with the inclusion of networks-on-chip (NoCs) as a key component of many-core (CMPs or MPSoCs) architectures. NoCs face the communication scalability challenge while meeting tight power, area, and latency constraints. Designers must address new challenges that were not present before. Defective components, the enhancement of application-level parallelism, or power-aware techniques may break topology regularity, thus, efficient routing becomes a challenge. This paper presents universal logic-based distributed routing (uLBDR), an efficient logic-based mechanism that adapts to any irregular topology derived from 2-D meshes, instead of using routing tables. uLBDR requires a small set of configuration bits, thus being more practical than large routing tables implemented in memories. Several implementations of uLBDR are presented highlighting the tradeoff between routing cost and coverage. The alternatives span from the previously proposed LBDR approach (with 30% of coverage) to the uLBDR mechanism achieving full coverage. This comes with a small performance cost, thus exhibiting the tradeoff between fault tolerance and performance. Power consumption, area, and delay estimates are also provided highlighting the efficiency of the mechanism. To do this, different router models (one for CMPs and one for MPSoCs) have been designed as a proof concept.

Flexible DOR routing for virtualization of multicore chips

The expected increase in number of cores on a single chip leads to the necessity of high-performance on chip interconnects (NoC). Furthermore, in order to fully utilize the abundance of cores, the chip is expected to support a number of applications running on the chip simultaneously. It is therefore necessary to partition the chip to support numerous applications without any risk of interference between them. The success of this depends on the flexibility of the underlying routing algorithm. This paper presents a flexible routing algorithm based on dimension ordered routing, which supports a large variety of irregular (2-D and 3-D) mesh topologies. The algorithm provides high efficiency at very low additional complexity, as is confirmed by experimental results.

On the Potential of NoC Virtualization for Multicore Chips

As the end of Moores-law is on the horizon, power becomes a limiting factor to continuous increases in performance gains for single-core processors. Processor engineers have shifted to the multicore paradigm and many-core processors are a reality. Within the context of these multi-core chips, three key metrics point themselves out as being of major importance, performance, fault-tolerance (including yield), and power consumption. A solution that optimizes all three of these metrics is challenging. As the number of cores increases the importance of the interconnection network-on-chip (NoC) grows as well, and chip designers should aim to optimize these three key metrics in the NoC context as well. In this paper we identify and discuss the main properties that a NoC must exhibit in order to enable such optimizations. In particular, we propose the use of virtualization techniques at the NoC level. AS a major finding, we identify the implementation of routing algorithms to become a key design parameter in order to achieve an effective virtualization of the chip should also supporting broadcast within the virtualized context. The intention behind this paper is for it to serve as a position paper on the topic of virtualization for NoC and the challenges that should be met at the routing layer in order to maximize performance, fault-tolerance and power consumption in multicore chips.

Yield-oriented evaluation methodology of network-on-chip routing implementations

Network-on-Chip technology is gaining wide popularity for the interconnection of an increasing number of processor cores on the same silicon die. However, growing process variations cause interconnect malfunction or prevent the network from working at the intended frequency, directly impacting yield and manufacturing cost. Topology agnostic routing algorithms have the potential to tolerate process variations without degrading performance. We propose a three step methodology for evaluating routing algorithms in their ability to deal with variability. Using yield enhancement and operation speed preservation as the criteria, we demonstrate how this methodology can be used to select the best design choice among several plausible combinations of routing algorithms and implementations. Also, we show how an efficient table-less routing implementation can be used to minimise the impact of variability on manufacturing and operating frequency.

iFDOR: dynamic rerouting on-chip

Many-core chip design requires flexible routing solutions for the interconnect to handle faults, provide performance partitions, and react to dynamic changes in processing requirements and power/heat distribution. We have developed a logic based rerouting mechanism suitable for tolerating dynamic powering down of regions within the application partition on the chip. This mechanism is combined with the logic based FDOR routing algorithm to create a powerful routing algorithm with low implementation cost. This allows for higher system utilisation through enabling more efficient power management as well as supporting many irregular mesh topologies through flexible virtualisation. Results show that powering down a single switch results in an 8% throughput reduction in the worst case for the evaluated topology.

Enabling power efficiency through dynamic rerouting on-chip

Networks-on-chip (NoCs) are key components in many-core chip designs. Dynamic power-awareness is a new challenge present in NoCs that must be efficiently handled by the routing functionality as it introduces irregularities in the commonly used 2-D meshes. In this article, we propose a logic-based routing algorithm, iFDOR, oriented towards dynamic powering down one region within every application partition on the chip through dynamic rerouting, with low implementation costs. Results show that we can successfully shutdown an arbitrary rectangular region within an application partition without significant impact on network performance.