The Other Face of On-Chip Interconnect

The multicore revolution has changed the way we think about computing. The same movement has also changed the way we look at on-chip interconnect because it is a key determinant of the performance and power efficiency of multicores. This talk will highlight some of the lesser known issues and opportunities of on-chip interconnect, such as protection, programming ease, and the impact on the basic structure of our software. The talk will borrow heavily from our experiences with on-chip interconnect in university research with the 16-core Raw multicore processor, in a commercial environment with Tilera's 64-core Tile processor, and in a future 1K-core multicore processor called ATAC that integrates optical and electrical interconnects