An efficient numerical-based crosstalk avoidance codec design for NoCs

Abstract

With technology scaling, crosstalk fault has become a serious problem in reliable data transfer through Network on Chip (NoC) channels. The effects of crosstalk fault depend on transition patterns appearing on the wires of NoC channels. Among these patterns, Triplet Opposite Direction (TOD) imposes the worst crosstalk effects. Crosstalk Avoidance Codes (CACs) are the overhead-efficient mechanisms to tackle TODs. The main problem of CACs is their high imposed overheads to NoC routers. To solve this problem, this paper proposes an overhead-efficient coding mechanism called Penultimate-Subtracted Fibonacci (PS-Fibo) to alleviate crosstalk faults in NoC wires. PS-Fibo coding mechanism benefits the novel numerical system that not only completely removes TODs but also, is applicable to a wide range of NoC channel widths. The PS-Fibo coding mechanism is evaluated using BookSim-2 and VHDL-based simulations in the terms of codec efficiency on the crosstalk fault reduction, codec power consumption, codec area occupation and network performance. Evaluation results, carried out for a wide range of NoC channel widths indicate that PS-Fibo can improve power consumption and area occupations of codec and NoC performance with respect to the other state-of-the-art coding mechanisms.