System-Level Analysis of Network Interfaces for Hierarchical MPSoCs

Ax J, Sievers G, Flasskamp M, Kelly W, Jungeblut T, Porrmann M. System-Level Analysis of Network Interfaces for Hierarchical MPSoCs. In: Proceedings of the 8th International Workshop on Network on Chip Architectures (NoCArc). New York, NY, USA: ACM; 2015: 3-8.Network Interfaces (NIs) are used in Multiprocessor System-on-Chips (MPSoCs) to connect CPUs to a packet switched Network-on-Chip. In this work we introduce a new NI architecture for our hierarchical CoreVA-MPSoC. The CoreVA-MPSoC targets streaming applications in embedded systems. The main contribution of this paper is a system-level analysis of different NI configurations, considering both software and hardware costs for NoC communication. Different configurations of the NI are compared using a benchmark suite of 10 streaming applications. The best performing NI configuration shows an average speedup of 20 for a CoreVA-MPSoC with 32 CPUs compared to a single CPU. Furthermore, we present physical implementation results using a 28 nm FD-SOI standard cell technology. A hierarchical MPSoC with 8 CPU clusters and 4 CPUs in each cluster running at 800 MHz requires an area of 4.56 mm²