Power and Thermal Analysis of Stacked Mesh 3D NoC Using AdaptiveXYZ Routing Algorithm

Three-dimensional integrated circuits (3D ICs) offer greater device integration, reduced signal delay and reduced interconnect power. It also provides greater design flexibility by allowing heterogeneous integration. However, 3D technology exacerbates the on-chip thermal issues and increases packaging and cooling costs. In order to exploit the intrinsic capability of reducing the wire length in 3D ICs, 3D NoC-Bus Hybrid mesh architecture was proposed. This architecture provides a seemingly significant platform to implement an integrated low-cost system-wide monitoring network. In this paper, a generic monitoring and management platform called ARB-NET is presented. Based on the ARB-NET monitoring platform, a fully congestion-aware adaptive routing algorithm named AdaptiveXYZ is provided which takes advantage from viable information generated within the monitoring network. In addition, we address both the power and thermal issues of a stacked mesh 3D network on chips using AdaptiveXYZ routing. To this end, a thermal model of a 3D stacked NoC system in a modern flip-chip package is developed. Thermal and power analysis are performed in order to investigate the impact of the proposed adaptive routing from the power and thermal perspectives. Our experiments with a videoconference encoder as a real application show significant power, performance and peak temperature improvements compared to a typical stacked mesh 3D NoC.