Multicast-enabled network-on-chip routers leveraging partitioned allocation and switching

Dimitris Konstantinou, Chrysostomos Nicopoulos, Junghee Lee, Giorgos Dimitrakopoulos

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

3 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Multicast on-chip communication is encountered in various cache-coherence protocols targeting multi-core processors, and its pervasiveness is increasing due to the proliferation of machine learning accelerators. In-network handling of multicast traffic imposes additional switching-level restrictions to guarantee deadlock freedom, while it stresses the allocation efficiency of Network-on-Chip (NoC) routers. In this work, we propose a novel partitioned NoC router microarchitecture, called SmartFork, which employs a versatile and cost-efficient multicast packet replication scheme that allows the design of high-throughput and low-cost NoCs. The design is adapted to the average branch splitting observed in real-world multicast routing algorithms. Compared to state-of-the-art NoC multicast approaches, SmartFork is demonstrated to yield high performance in terms of latency and throughput, while still offering a cost-effective implementation.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)104-112
Number of pages9
JournalIntegration, the VLSI Journal
Volume77
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2021 Mar

Keywords

  • Micro-architecture
  • Multicast
  • Network-on-Chip
  • Router

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Software
  • Hardware and Architecture
  • Electrical and Electronic Engineering

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