Abstract
As improvement of System-on-Chip (SoC) technology, many-core processors are becoming more and more important. Their communication infrastructures will be implemented with Networks-on-Chip (NoC). Networks-on-Chip (NoC) contains a large number of switches and interconnects that form a structure spanning across the chip. Unfortunately, with increasing numbers of on-chip components expected to be defective in near-future chips, modern parallel systems, such as many-core system, become especially vulnerable to these faults. Just a single channel broken in the Network-on-Chip (NoC) may cause part of the communication stop and even deadlock, rendering the chip useless. Network-on-Chip (NoC) may also be needed for improving the chip yield. In this thesis, we present an approach for analyzing and improving fault tolerance aspects in NoC architecture. This is a necessary step to be taken in order to implement reliable systems in future technologies. We propose a self-repair method. Adding a local channel between adjacent Processing Elements (PEs) to implement fault-tolerant NoC, which will signi cantly improve the yield of the system. We use a simple RC formulation to calculate the wire delay of local channel. The wire delay is under 1ns and, so it is a ordable for using local channel. Also this local channel only connects adjacent PEs, which is closed on the mesh. We dont need to worry about the complexity of routing on the chip. Besides, the local channel between adjacent PEs can reduce the transaction time. We design and analyze fault-tolerant NoC on the many-core ESL simulation platform in SystemC. This ESL-platform have sixteen Processing Elements (PEs) based on NoC. We add two to four OCP interface in each Processing Element (PE) for local channel between adjacent PEs. Detail of this architecture will show in the thesis. The experimental results show the yield of fault-tolerant NoC and the latency overhead when the channels are broken. The SPLASH2 application represent that the latency overhead is about 1% to 2% when there are channels broken.