On-Chip Networks: Second Edition

Description

This book targets engineers and researchers familiar with basic computer architecture concepts who are interested in learning about on-chip networks. This work is designed to be a short synthesis of the most critical concepts in on-chip network design. It is a resource for both understanding on-chip network basics and for providing an overview of state of the-art research in on-chip networks. We believe that an overview that teaches both fundamental concepts and highlights state-of-the-art designs will be of great value to both graduate students and industry engineers. While not an exhaustive text, we hope to illuminate fundamental concepts for the reader as well as identify trends and gaps in on-chip network research. With the rapid advances in this field, we felt it was timely to update and review the state of the art in this second edition. We introduce two new chapters at the end of the book. We have updated the latest research of the past years throughout the book and also expanded our coverage of fundamental concepts to include several research ideas that have now made their way into products and, in our opinion, should be textbook concepts that all on-chip network practitioners should know. For example, these fundamental concepts include message passing, multicast routing, and bubble flow control schemes. Preface Acknowledgments Introduction The Advent of the Multi-core Era Communication Demands of Multi-core Architectures On-chip vs. Off-chip Networks Network Basics: A Quick Primer Evolution to On-chip Networks On-chip Network Building Blocks Performance and Cost This Book—Second Edition Interface with System Architecture Shared Memory Networks in Chip Multiprocessors Impact of Coherence Protocol on Network Performance Coherence Protocol Requirements for the On-chip Network Protocol-level Network Deadlock Impact of Cache Hierarchy Implementation on Network Performance Home Node and Memory Controller Design Issues Miss and Transaction Status Holding Registers Brief State-of-the-Art Survey Message Passing Brief State-of-the-Art Survey NoC Interface Standards Conclusion Topology Metrics Traffic-independent Metrics Traffic-dependent Metrics Direct Topologies: Rings, Meshes, and Tori Indirect Topologies: Crossbars, Butterflies, Clos Networks, and Fat Trees Irregular Topologies Splitting and Merging Topology Synthesis Algorithm Example Hierarchical Topologies Implementation Place-and-route Implication of Abstract Metrics Brief State-of-the-Art Survey Routing Types of Routing Algorithms Deadlock Avoidance Deterministic Dimension-ordered Routing Oblivious Routing Adaptive Routing Multicast Routing Routing on Irregular Topologies Implementation Source Routing Node Table-based Routing Combinational Circuits Adaptive Routing Brief State-of-the-Art Survey Flow Control Messages, Packets, Flits, and Phits Message-based Flow Control Circuit Switching Packet-based Flow Control Store and Forward Virtual Cut-through Flit-based Flow Control Wormhole Virtual Channels Deadlock-free Flow Control Dateline and VC Partitioning Escape VCs Bubble Flow Control Buffer Backpressure Implementation Buffer Sizing for Turnaround Time Reverse Signaling Wires Flow Control in Application Specific On-chip Networks Brief State-of-the-Art Survey Router Microarchitecture Virtual Channel Router Microarchitecture Buffers and Virtual Channels Buffer Organization Input VC State Switch Design Crossbar Designs Crossbar Speedup Crossbar Slicing Allocators and Arbiters Round-robin Arbiter Matrix Arbiter Separable Allocator Wavefront Allocator Allocator Organization Pipeline Pipeline Implementation Pipeline Optimizations Low-power Microarchitecture Dynamic Power Leakage Power Physical Implementation Router Floorplanning Buffer Implementation Brief State-of-the-Art Survey Modeling and Evaluation Evaluation Metrics Analytical Model Ideal Interconnect Fabric Network Delay-throughput-energy Curve On-chip Network Modeling Infrastructure RTL and Software Models Power and Area Models Traffic Message Classes, Virtual Networks, Message Sizes, and Ordering Application Traffic Synthetic Traffic Debug Methodology NoC Generators Brief State-of-the-Art Survey Case Studies MIT Eyeriss (2016) Princeton Piton (2015) Intel Xeon-Phi (2015) D E Shaw Research Anton 2 (2014) MIT SCORPIO (2014) Oracle Sparc T5 (2013) University of Michigan Swizzle Switch (2012) MIT Broadcast NoC (2012) Georgia Tech 3D-MAPS (2012) KAIST Multicast NoC (2010) Intel Single-chip Cloud (2009) UC Davis AsAP (2009) Tilera TILEPRO64 (2008) ST Microelectronics STNoC (2008) Intel TeraFLOPS (2007) IBM Cell (2005) Conclusion Conclusions Beyond Conventional Interconnects Resilient On-chip Networks NoCs as Interconnects within FPGAs NoCs in Accelerator-rich Heterogeneous SoCs On-chip Networks Conferences Bibliographic Notes References Authors' Biographies