Scenario-Aware Control of Segmented Ladder Bus: Design and FPGA Implementation

TL;DR

This paper introduces a scenario-aware control plane for segmented ladder buses in neuromorphic architectures, optimizing energy, area, and scalability through FPGA implementation and simulation.

Contribution

It presents a novel scalable control plane design methodology tailored for segmented ladder buses, reducing control overhead and area footprint.

Findings

Reduces control plane area compared to data plane

Maintains scalability with network size

Effective in FPGA implementation and simulation

Abstract

Large-scale neuromorphic architectures consist of computing tiles that communicate spikes using a shared interconnect. The communication patterns in these systems are inherently sparse, asynchronous, and localized, as neural activity is characterized by temporal sparsity with occasional bursts of high traffic. These characteristics require optimized interconnects to handle high-activity bursts while consuming minimal power during idle periods. Among the proposed interconnect solutions, the dynamic segmented bus has gained attention due to its structural simplicity, scalability, and energy efficiency. Since the benefits of a dynamic segmented bus stem from its simplicity, it is essential to develop a streamlined control plane that can scale efficiently with the network. In this paper, we present a design methodology for a scenario-aware control plane tailored to a segmented ladder bus, with the aim of minimizing control overhead and optimizing energy and area utilization. We evaluated our approach using a combination of FPGA implementation and software simulation to assess scalability. The results demonstrated that our design process effectively reduces the control plane's area footprint compared to the data plane while maintaining scalability with network size.