An Application-Specific Design Methodology for STbus Crossbar Generation
Proceedings of the conference on Design, Automation and Test in Europe - Volume 2
Proceedings of the 42nd annual Design Automation Conference
System level design paradigms: Platform-based design and communication synthesis
Proceedings of the 41st annual Design Automation Conference
Journal of Systems and Software
Systematic customization of on-chip crossbar interconnects
ARC'07 Proceedings of the 3rd international conference on Reconfigurable computing: architectures, tools and applications
Microprocessors & Microsystems
Integrating real-time inter-task communication channels into hardware-software codesign
Microprocessors & Microsystems
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In this paper, we present a methodology for the design of high-performance system-on-chip communication architectures. The approach is based on the addition of a layer of circuitry called the communication architecture tuner (CAT) layer around an existing communication architecture topology. The added layer provides a system with the capability of adapting to runtime variability in the communication needs of its constituent components. For example, more critical data may be handled differently, leading to lower communication latencies. The CAT associated with each component monitors its internal state, analyzes the communication transactions it generates, and "predicts" the relative importance of the transactions in terms of their impact on system-level performance metrics. It then configures the protocol parameters of the underlying communication architecture (e.g., priorities, burst modes, etc.) to best suit the system's changing communication needs. We illustrate the issues and tradeoffs involved in the design of CAT-based communication architectures, and present algorithms that automate the key steps. Experiments with example systems indicate that performance metrics (e.g., number of missed deadlines, average processing time) for systems with CAT-based communication architectures are significantly (sometimes over an order of magnitude) better than those with conventional communication architectures.