Energy scalability of on-chip interconnection networks

On-chip interconnection networks (OCN) such as point-to-point networks and buses form the communication backbone in multiprocessor systems-on-a-chip, multicore processors, and tiled processors. OCNs consume significant portions of a chip's energy budget, so their energy analysis early in the design cycle becomes important for architectural design decisions. Although innumerable studies have examined OCN implementation and performance, there have been few energy analysis studies. This thesis develops an analytical framework for energy estimation in OCNs, for any given topology and arbitrary communication patterns, and presents OCN energy results based on both analytical communication models and real network traces from applications running on a tiled multicore processor. This thesis is the first work to address communication locality in analyzing multicore interconnect energy and to use real multicore interconnect traces extensively. The thesis compares the energy performance of point-to-point networks with buses for varying degrees of communication locality. The model accounts for wire length, switch energy, and network contention. This work is the first to examine network contention from the energy standpoint.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2007

Author dc:creator

• Konstantakopoulos, Theodoros K., 1977-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Anant Agarwal.

• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/40315

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/40315