Design of an NoC Interface Macrocell with Hardware Support of Advanced Networking Functionalities

Author

Saponara, S. ; Bacchillone, Tony ; Petri, Esa ; Fanucci, L. ; Locatelli, Riccardo ; Coppola, Massimo

Author_Institution

Dept. of Inf. Eng., Univ. di Pisa, Pisa, Italy

Volume

63

Issue

3

fYear

2014

fDate

Mar-14

Firstpage

609

Lastpage

621

Abstract

This paper presents the design and the characterization in nanoscale CMOS technology of a Network Interface (NI) for on-chip communication infrastructure with hardware support of advanced networking functionalities: store & forward (S&F) transmission, error management, power management, ordering handling, security, QoS management, programmability, end-to-end protocol interoperability, remapping. The design has been conceived as a scalable architecture: The advanced features can be added on top of a basic NI core implementing data packetization and conversion of protocols, frequency and data size between the connected Intellectual Property (IP) core and the on chip network. The NI can be configured to reach the desired tradeoff between supported services and circuit complexity.

Keywords

CMOS integrated circuits; integrated logic circuits; microprocessor chips; network interfaces; network-on-chip; on-board communications; open systems; quality of service; telecommunication switching; IP core; NI core; NoC interface macrocell design; QoS management; S&F transmission; advanced networking functionalities; circuit complexity; data conversion; data packetization; data size; end-to-end protocol interoperability; error management; hardware support; intellectual property core; nanoscale CMOS technology; network interface; on-chip communication infrastructure; ordering handling; power management; programmability; scalable architecture; store & forward transmission; Computer architecture; Frequency conversion; IP networks; Kernel; Nickel; Payloads; Protocols; Intellectual Property (IP); Multi-Processor System-on-Chip (MPSoC); Network-Interface (NI); Network-on-Chip (NoC); VLSI architectures;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Computers, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9340

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/TC.2012.70

Filename

6175011