High Performance Hybrid Two Layer Router Architecture for FPGAs Using Network On Chip

TL;DR

This paper introduces a high-performance hybrid two-layer router architecture for FPGA-based Networks on Chip, combining packet-switched and circuit-switched communication to enhance bandwidth and scalability.

Contribution

It proposes a novel microarchitecture for a hybrid router supporting both packet and circuit switching, with demonstrated 20.4% bandwidth improvement over traditional NoCs.

Findings

20.4% average bandwidth improvement

Supports both packet and circuit switching

Parameterizable router design

Abstract

Networks on Chip is a recent solution paradigm adopted to increase the performance of Multicore designs. The key idea is to interconnect various computation modules (IP cores) in a network fashion and transport packets simultaneously across them, thereby gaining performance. In addition to improving performance by having multiple packets in flight, NoCs also present a host of other advantages including scalability, power efficiency, and component reuse through modular design. This work focuses on design and development of high performance communication architectures for FPGAs using NoCs Once completely developed, the above methodology could be used to augment the current FPGA design flow for implementing multicore SoC applications. We design and implement an NoC framework for FPGAs, MultiClock OnChip Network for Reconfigurable Systems (MoCReS). We propose a novel microarchitecture for a hybrid two layer router that supports both packetswitched communications, across its local and directional ports, as well as, time multiplexed circuitswitched communications among the multiple IP cores directly connected to it. Results from place and route VHDL models of the advanced router architecture show an average improvement of 20.4 percent in NoC bandwidth (maximum of 24 percent compared to a traditional NoC). We parameterize the hybrid router model over the number of ports, channel width and bRAM depth and develop a library of network components (MoClib Library). For your paper to be published in the conference proceedings, you must use this document as both an instruction set and as a template into which you can type your own text. If your paper does not conform to the required format, you will be asked to fix it.