A semi-distributed control system for application management in a NoC-based architecture

Networks-on-chip (NoCs) are high-performance structures to support communications in complex systems-on-chip (SoCs). However, in such architectures, scheduling and configuration of the distributed processing elements become a problematic by itself. The authors address this issue with an innovative semi-distributed control scheme based on a specific reconfigurable network interface architecture which allows the dynamic control and configuration of complex applications, such as fourth-generation telecommunication data processing. Our scheme improves the autonomy of the processing units, with low overhead on integration and performance constraints. The architecture introduces a centralized configuration server mechanism, which reduces the individual complexity of each network interface. In addition, caching is used to optimize the memory/performance trade-off. This paper illustrates SoC dynamic configuration in our context and describes our solution. Benefits are validated by simulation and complexity is evaluated with synthesis results