Equalized interconnects for on-chip networks: modeling and optimization framework

Abstract

This paper presents a modeling framework for fast design space exploration and optimization of equalized on-chip interconnects. The exploration is enabled by cross-layer modeling that connects the transistor and wire parameters to link performance, equalization coefficients, and architecture-friendly metrics (delay, energy-per-bit, and throughput density). Appropriate models are derived to speed-up the search by more than two orders of magnitude and make a million point design space searchable in less than two hours on a standard machine. With this approach we are able to find the best link design for target throughput, power and area constraints, thus enabling the architectural optimization of energy-efficient on-chip networks. For the same latency and throughput density, equalized interconnects optimized using the new methodology have up to 10times better energy-efficiency than optimized repeater interconnects.