Time: 10:00–11:00am, July 1, 2009
Room: Room 401 of the building of school of microelectronics;
Title: Networks-on-Chip for Systems-on-Chip
Speaker: Prof. Jiang Xu
Department of ECE
Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Organizer: Prof. Yuzhuo Fu
Abstract
Systems-on-Chip (SoCs) are attractive platforms for embedded computing, because integrating a system or a complex subsystem on a single chip provides better performance, reliability, and cost per function. The performance of an SoC is decided not only by the performance of functional units composing it but also by the efficiency with which these functional units communicate. It is the SoCs communication architecture which decides the cooperation efficiency. As the complexity of SoCs increases, on-chip communication cost also increases, and low power management requires more flexible communication schemes. Furthermore, over each technology generation, while shrinking feature sizes reduce gate delays exponentially, global wire delays increase exponentially at the same time.
This work studied the communication subsystems of SoCs and their codesign with computation and memory subsystems. We proposed a novel on-chip communication architecture, the Application-Specific Network-on-Chip (ASNoC). ASNoCs achieve higher performance and lower cost than regular-topology Networks-on-Chip (NoCs) by using hierarchies, irregular topologies, floorplan estimation, and selected protocols. We proposed a systematic ASNoC design methodologies, compatible with current hardware/software codesign flows. Using the methodology, we designed ASNoCs for two SoCs. Results show that the ASNoCs offer significantly higher performance and lower cost than regular-topology NoCs.
Short Biography
Dr. Xu is an Assistant Professor of Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering in the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He received his Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from Princeton University, USA. He received both the B.S. and M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Harbin Institute of Technology, China. He was a Research Associate of Bell Labs, USA, from 2001 to 2002, and was a Research Associate of NEC Laboratories America from 2003 to 2005. Dr. Xu was a Member of Technical Staff at a startup company in USA from 2005 to 2007. He served on the committee of ICCD, CASES, ISVLSI, NOCS, EMSOFT, etc. His research areas include multiprocessor systems, system-on-chip, computer architecture, low-power VLSI design, and embedded systems.