Efficient exploration of the SoC communication architecture design space

In this paper, we present a methodology and efficient algorithms for the design of high-performance system-on-chip communication architectures. Our methodology automatically and optimally maps the various communications between system components onto a target communication architecture template that can consist of an arbitrary interconnection of shared or dedicated channels. In addition, our techniques simultaneously configure the communication protocols of each channel in the architecture in order to optimize system performance. We motivate the need for systematic exploration of the communication architecture design space, and highlight the issues involved through illustrative examples. We present a methodology and algorithms that address these issues, including the size and complexity of the design space. We present experimental results on example systems, including a cell forwarding unit of an ATM switch, that demonstrate the benefits of using the proposed techniques. Experimental results indicate that our techniques are successful in achieving significant improvements in system performance over conventional communication architectures (observed speedups over typical architectures such as single shared buses averaged 53%). Moreover, we demonstrate that our design space exploration methodology and optimization algorithms are efficient (low CPU times), underlining their usefulness as part of any system design flow.