A dynamic stream link for efficient data flow control in NoC based heterogeneous MPSoC
Claude Helmstetter, S. Basset, R. Lemaire, F. Clermidy, Pascal Vivet, M. Langevin, Chuck Pilkington, Pierre G. Paulin, Didier Fuin · 2013
As Systems-on-Chip size increase, the communication costs become critical and Networks-on-Chip (NoC) bring innovative solutions. Efficient stream-based protocols over NoC have been widely studied to address dataflow communications. They are usually controlled by a set of static parameters. However, new applications, such as high-resolution video decoders, present more data-dependent behaviors forcing communication protocols to support higher dynamicity. For this purpose, we present in this paper dynamic stream links for stream-based end-to-end NoC communications by introducing two link protocols, both independent of the transfer size, allowing to improve the hardware/software control flexibility. The proposed protocols have been modeled in a MPSoC virtual platform and the hardware cost evaluated. Based on simulations, we provide guidelines to exploit these protocols according to application needs.