Mesh-based Architecture Research Articles

A thermally-resilient all-optical network-on-chip

Optical networks-on-chip are introduced as an alternative for electrical interconnects in many-core systems, due to their low delay and power consumptions, as well as their high bandwidths. Despite these advantages, physical characteristics of the photonic components are highly sensitive to thermal variations, which results in optical data misrouting through the optical networks at the presence of temperature fluctuation. In this paper, we propose a thermally-resilient all-optical communication approach which improves reliability, as well as performance of the optical networks. For this purpose, we take advantages of auxiliary waveguides and a novel wavelength assignment approach to avoid optical data routing through the hot regions. In this manner, each node is provided with an alternative path to resend the misrouted optical data in the case of fault occurrence. A novel all-optical Mesh-based architecture is opted for the proposed thermally-resilient optical communication approach, as well as the well-known λ-router, as direct and indirect all-optical non-blocking networks, respectively. Simulation results verify the prominence of the proposed reliable Mesh-based architecture against alternative architecture, in terms of network performance, thermal resilience, and throughput.

Exploration of Heterogeneous FPGA Architectures

Mesh-based heterogeneous FPGAs are commonly used in industry and academia due to their area, speed, and power benefits over their homogeneous counterparts. These FPGAs contain a mixture of logic blocks and hard blocks where hard blocks are arranged in fixed columns as they offer an easy and compact layout. However, the placement of hard-blocks in fixed columns can potentially lead to underutilization of logic and routing resources and this problem is further aggravated with increase in the types of hard-blocks. This work explores and compares different floor-planning techniques of mesh-based FPGA to determine their effect on the area, performance, and power of the architecture. A tree-based architecture is also presented; unlike mesh-based architecture, the floor-planning of heterogeneous tree-based architecture does not affect its routing requirements due to its hierarchical structure. Both mesh and tree-based architectures are evaluated for three sets of benchmark circuits. Experimental results show that a more flexible floor-planning in mesh-based FPGA gives better results as compared to the column-based floor-planning. Also it is shown that compared to different floor-plannings of mesh-based FPGA, tree-based architecture gives better area, performance, and power results.

Dual-Link Hierarchical Cluster-Based Interconnect Architecture for 3D Network on Chip

Network on Chip (NoC) has emerged as a promising on chip communication infrastructure. Three Dimensional Integrate Circuit (3D IC) provides small interconnection length between layers and the interconnect scalability in the third dimension, which can further improve the performance of NoC. Therefore, in this paper, a hierarchical cluster-based interconnect architecture is merged with the 3D IC. This interconnect architecture significantly reduces the number of long wires. Since this architecture only has approximately a quarter of routers in 3D mesh-based architecture, the average number of hops is smaller, which leads to lower latency and higher throughput. Moreover, smaller number of routers decreases the area overhead. Meanwhile, some dual links are inserted into the bot- tlenecks of communication to improve the performance of NoC. Simulation results demonstrate our theoretical analysis and show the advantages of our proposed architecture in latency, throughput and area, when compared with 3D mesh-based architecture. Keywords—Network on Chip (NoC), interconnect architecture, performance, area, Three Dimensional Integrate Circuit (3D IC).

What a mesh! An architecture for next-generation radio access networks

With fourth-generation wireless technologies envisioned to provide high bandwidth for content-rich multimedia applications, next-generation mobile communication systems are well poised to lead the technology march. Incumbent with the new technology is the challenge of providing flexible, reconfigurable architectures capable of catering to the dynamics of the network, while providing cost-effective solutions for service providers. In this article we focus on IP-based radio access network architectures for next-generation mobile systems. We provide an insight into wireless mesh-based connectivity for the RAN network elements - using short high-bandwidth links to interconnect the network entities in a multihop mesh network for backhauling traffic to the core. A generic self-similar fractal topology, using optical wireless transmission technology, is described. We study the performance of the architecture and conclude that mesh-based architectures are well suited to provide highly scalable, dynamic radio access networks with carrier-class features at significantly low system costs.