Abstract
A performance-evaluation simulator, such as a cycle-accurate simulator, is a key tool for exploring appropriate asynchronous Network-on-Chip (NoC) architectures in early stages of VLSI design, but its accuracy is insufficient in practical VLSI implementation. In this paper, a highly accurate performance-evaluation simulator based on a delay-aware model is proposed for implementing an appropriate asynchronous NoC system. While the unit delay between circuit blocks at every pipeline stage is constant in the conventional cycle-accurate simulator, which causes poor accuracy, the unit delay between circuit blocks in the proposed approach is determined independently by its desirable logic function. The use of this "delay-aware" model makes it accurate to simulate asynchronous NoC systems. As a design example, a 16-core asynchronous Spidergon NoC system is simulated by the conventional cycle-accurate and the proposed simulator whose results, such as latency and throughput, are validated with a highly precise transistor-level simulation result. As a result, the proposed simulator achieves almost the same accuracy as one of the transistor-level simulators with the simulation speed comparable to the cycle-accurate simulator.
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Acknowledgements
This research was supported by JST, CREST. This simulation is supported by VLSI Design and Education Center (VDEC), the University of Tokyo in collaboration with Synopsys, Inc. and Cadence Design Systems, Inc.
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Onizawa, N., Funazaki, T., Matsumoto, A., Hanyu, T. (2011). Accurate Asynchronous Network-on-Chip Simulation Based on a Delay-Aware Model. In: Voros, N., Mukherjee, A., Sklavos, N., Masselos, K., Huebner, M. (eds) VLSI 2010 Annual Symposium. Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering, vol 105. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1488-5_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1488-5_2
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