NoC Topologies Exploration based on Mapping and Simulation Models
Luciano Bononi, Nicola Concer, Miltos D. Grammatikakis, Marcello Coppola, Riccardo Locatelli · 2007
NoC architectures are considered the next generation interconnect systems for multiprocessor systems-on-chip. Selection of the network architecture and mapping of IP nodes onto the NoC topology are two important research topics. In this paper we compare well known NoC interconnect systems, specifically, Ring, 2d-Mesh, Spidergon and unbuffered Crossbar using theoretical uniform traffic based on the request/reply paradigm as well as a realistic traffic based on a Mpeg4 application. The IP mapping is automatically computed by the SCOTCH partitioning tool based on defined embedding quality criteria that respect multiple topological constraints. Our simulation results indicate that, in general, Ring and Spidergon provide good tradeoffs between cost, performance, scalability, while Mesh is unable to exploit extra communication paths when using simplified deadlock-free routing scheme under irregular traffic. We also highlight the unexpectedly poor performance obtained in some scenarios by directly connected unbuffered Crossbar architectures. 1.