Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SD (대한전자공학회논문지SD)

The Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers (대한전자공학회)
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On-chip-network Protocol for Efficient Network Utilization

효율적인 네트워크 사용을 위한 온 칩 네트워크 프로토콜

  • Lee, Chan-Ho (School of Electronic Engr., Soongsil University)
  • 이찬호 (숭실대학교 정보통신전자공학부)
  • Published : 2010.01.25
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Abstract

A system-on-chip (SoC) includes more functions and requires rapidly increased data bandwidth as the development of semiconductor process technology and SoC design methodology. As a result, the data bandwidth of on-chip-networks in SoCs becomes a key factor of the system performance, and the research on the on-chip-network is performed actively. Either AXI or OCP is considered to a substitute of the AHB which has been the most popular on-chip-network. However, they have much increased number of signal wires, which make it difficult to design the interface logic and the network hardware. The compatibility of the protocols with other protocols is not so good. In this paper, we propose a new interface protocol for on-chip-networks to improve the problems mentioned above. The proposed protocol uses less number of signal wires than that of the AHB and considers the compatibility with other interface protocols such as the AXI. According the analysis results, the performance of the proposed protocol per wire is much better than that of the AXI although the absolute performance is slightly inferior.

반도체 공정 및 설계 기술의 발전에 따라 SoC에 보다 많은 기능이 포함되고 데이터 전송량 또한 급격히 증가하고 있다. 이에 따라 SoC 내부의 온 칩 네트워크에서 데이터 전송 속도가 전체 시스템의 성능에 큰 영향을 미치게 되어 이와 관련된 연구가 활발하게 진행되고 있다. 기존의 AHB를 대체하기 위한 온 칩 네트워크 프로토콜로 AXI와 OCP가 대표적으로 거론되고 있으나 전송 성능을 증가시키기 위해 신호선의 수가 크게 증가하여 인터페이스와 네트워크 하드웨어 설계가 매우 어렵고 기존에 널리 사용되던 AHB와 다른 프로토콜과의 호환성도 좋지 않다. 본 논문에서는 이를 개선하기 위한 새로운 온 칩 네트워크 프로토콜을 제안한다. 제안된 프로토콜은 신호선의 수를 기존의 AHB보다 줄이고 AXI 등 다른 프로토콜과의 호환성도 고려하였다. 성능 분석결과 AXI보다는 조금 떨어지는 성능을 보여주고 있으나 8-버스트 이상의 전송에서는 큰 차이가 없고 신호선 수대비 성능에서는 월등히 우수함을 확인하였다.

Keywords

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