A Benes Based NoC Switching Architecture for Mixed Criticality Embedded Systems

TL;DR

This paper introduces MCENoC, a Benes network-based NoC architecture designed for mixed criticality embedded systems, ensuring predictable and verifiable timing behavior crucial for safety-critical applications.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel Benes network-based NoC architecture with formal verification methods, enhancing predictability and safety in mixed criticality embedded systems.

Findings

Predictable, formally verifiable timing behavior across the NoC

Design achieves high throughput and compact size

Formal properties enable exhaustive verification

Abstract

Multi-core, Mixed Criticality Embedded (MCE) real-time systems require high timing precision and predictability to guarantee there will be no interference between tasks. These guarantees are necessary in application areas such as avionics and automotive, where task interference or missed deadlines could be catastrophic, and safety requirements are strict. In modern multi-core systems, the interconnect becomes a potential point of uncertainty, introducing major challenges in proving behaviour is always within specified constraints, limiting the means of growing system performance to add more tasks, or provide more computational resources to existing tasks. We present MCENoC, a Network-on-Chip (NoC) switching architecture that provides innovations to overcome this with predictable, formally verifiable timing behaviour that is consistent across the whole NoC. We show how the fundamental properties of Benes networks benefit MCE applications and meet our architecture requirements. Using SystemVerilog Assertions (SVA), formal properties are defined that aid the refinement of the specification of the design as well as enabling the implementation to be exhaustively formally verified. We demonstrate the performance of the design in terms of size, throughput and predictability, and discuss the application level considerations needed to exploit this architecture.