An Efficient FPGA-Based Network-on-Chip Simulation Framework Utilizing the Hard Blocks

Abstract

In multi-processor system-on-chips, on-chip interconnection plays a significant role. The type of on-chip architecture being used in an application decides the performance of that application. Hence, a quick and versatile network-on-Chip (NoC) simulator, particularly for the larger designs, is essential to explore and find the best suitable NoC configuration for individual applications. An FPGA-based NoC simulation framework has been proposed in this work. The crossbar switch of the NoC router with buffers and five ports has been embedded in the wide multiplexers of the DSP48E1 slices. The distinctive feature of dynamic mode functionality of the DSP48E1 slices every clock cycle depending on the control signals of multiplexer plays a crucial role in incorporating the crossbar functionality. A substantial decrease in the configurable logic blocks (CLBs) utilization of NoC topologies on the FPGA has been observed by embedding the functionality of the crossbar on the DSP48E1 slices. Since there is a reduction in the use of CLB resources employing the crossbar based on DSP48E1, topologies of larger sizes can be simulated. 6 × 6 Mesh topology with the DSP crossbar implementation consumes 36% fewer lookup tables (LUTs) and 40% fewer flip flops than the Mesh topology with CLB-based crossbar implementation. 41% fewer LUTs and 23% fewer slices are consumed by the proposed work with respect to the state-of-the-art CONNECT NoC generation tool. Compared to DART, a reduction of 86% and 80% in LUTs and slices has been observed with respect to the proposed work. Hoplite-DSP implements the unidirectional Torus topology with no buffers considering the deflective routing algorithm. The proposed work targets Mesh-based topologies with buffers and bidirectional ports with XY and look-ahead routing algorithms. © 2020, Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.