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WaveSync: Low-Latency Source-Synchronous Bypass Network-on-Chip Architecture

Published: 29 August 2014 Publication History

Abstract

WaveSync is a network-on-chip architecture for a globally asynchronous locally-synchronous (GALS) design. The WaveSync design facilitates low-latency communication leveraging the source-synchronous clock sent along with the data to time components in the datapath of a downstream router, reducing the number of synchronizations needed. WaveSync accomplishes this by partitioning the router components at each node into different clock domains, each synchronized with one of the orthogonal incoming source-synchronous clocks in a GALS 2D mesh network. The data and clock subsequently propagate through each node/router synchronously until the destination is reached, regardless of the number of hops this may take. As long as the data travels in the path of clock propagation and no congestion is encountered, it will be propagated without latching as if in a long combinatorial path, with both the clock and the data accruing delay at the same rate. The result is that the need for synchronization between the mesochronous nodes and/or the asynchronous control associated with the typical GALS network is completely eliminated. To further reduce the latency overhead of synchronization, for those occasions when synchronization is still required (when a flit takes a turn or arrives at the destination), we propose a novel less-than-one-cycle synchronizer. The proposed WaveSync network outperforms conventional GALS networks by 87--90% in average latency, synthesized using a 45nm CMOS library.

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  • (2023)Wave-Pipelined Source-Synchronous Circuit-Switched Data Transmission2023 12th International Conference on Modern Circuits and Systems Technologies (MOCAST)10.1109/MOCAST57943.2023.10176839(1-6)Online publication date: 28-Jun-2023

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cover image ACM Transactions on Design Automation of Electronic Systems
ACM Transactions on Design Automation of Electronic Systems  Volume 19, Issue 4
August 2014
246 pages
ISSN:1084-4309
EISSN:1557-7309
DOI:10.1145/2663459
  • Editor:
  • Naehyuck Chang
Issue’s Table of Contents
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Publication History

Published: 29 August 2014
Accepted: 01 May 2014
Revised: 01 April 2014
Received: 01 January 2013
Published in TODAES Volume 19, Issue 4

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Author Tags

  1. Network-on-chip
  2. bypass routing
  3. globally asynchronous locally synchronous
  4. half-cycle synchronizer
  5. low-latency communication
  6. router design
  7. source synchronous
  8. synchronization

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  • (2023)Wave-Pipelined Source-Synchronous Circuit-Switched Data Transmission2023 12th International Conference on Modern Circuits and Systems Technologies (MOCAST)10.1109/MOCAST57943.2023.10176839(1-6)Online publication date: 28-Jun-2023

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