Performance exploration of partially connected 3D NoCs under manufacturing variability

Several Through-Silicon-Vias (TSVs) may present resistive and open defects due to 3D manufacture variability. This paper advocates the use of 3D Network-on-Chip (NoC) with asynchronous communication interfaces to cope with significant variations in TSV propagation delays. The technique uses serial communication in the vertical channels to reduce the number of TSVs. Based on a representative delay distribution, we compare the average performance considering a non-defective 3D NoC, one with resistive defective TSVs and one with resistive and open defective TSVs. Results show that it is better to adapt the interfaces to cope with large margins of delay than to avoid TSVs by using adaptive routing.