Citation
T.-C. Huang, U. Y. Ogras, R. Marculescu. "Virtual Channels Planning for Networks-on-Chip". International Symposium on Quality Electronic Design, March, 2007.

Abstract
The virtual channel flow control (VCFC) provides an efficient implementation for on-chip networks. However, allocating the virtual channels (VCs) uniformly results in a waste of area and significant leakage power, especially at nanoscale. To remedy this situation, we propose a novel approach for customizing the virtual channels allocation based on the traffic characteristics of the target application. Towards this end, we first develop an algorithm that calculates the port contention rates and expected bandwidth at each router in the network. Using this information, we add VCs only to the channels with the highest bandwidth usage. Our simulation results involving synthetic and real applications show more than 40% buffer savings compared to uniform VC allocation, while achieving similar performance levels.

Electronic downloads

• http://www.ece.cmu.edu/~sld/pubs/papers/04149144.pdf

Citation formats

• HTML

  T.-C. Huang, U. Y. Ogras, R. Marculescu. <a
  href="http://www.gigascale.org/pubs/1014.html">Virtual
  Channels Planning for Networks-on-Chip</a>,
  International Symposium on Quality Electronic Design, March,
  2007.

• Plain text

  T.-C. Huang, U. Y. Ogras, R. Marculescu. "Virtual Channels
  Planning for Networks-on-Chip". International Symposium on
  Quality Electronic Design, March, 2007.

• BibTeX

  @inproceedings{HuangOgrasMarculescu07_VirtualChannelsPlanningForNetworksonChip,
      author = {T.-C. Huang and U. Y. Ogras and R. Marculescu},
      title = {Virtual Channels Planning for Networks-on-Chip},
      booktitle = {International Symposium on Quality Electronic
                Design},
      month = {March},
      year = {2007},
      abstract = {The virtual channel flow control (VCFC) provides
                an efficient implementation for on-chip networks.
                However, allocating the virtual channels (VCs)
                uniformly results in a waste of area and
                significant leakage power, especially at
                nanoscale. To remedy this situation, we propose a
                novel approach for customizing the virtual
                channels allocation based on the traffic
                characteristics of the target application. Towards
                this end, we first develop an algorithm that
                calculates the port contention rates and expected
                bandwidth at each router in the network. Using
                this information, we add VCs only to the channels
                with the highest bandwidth usage. Our simulation
                results involving synthetic and real applications
                show more than 40% buffer savings compared to
                uniform VC allocation, while achieving similar
                performance levels.},
      URL = {http://www.gigascale.org/pubs/1014.html}
  }
  

Posted by Umit Y. Ogras on 31 May 2007..

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