J. Dielissen

Bio: J. Dielissen is an academic researcher from Philips. The author has contributed to research in topics: Network interface & Very long instruction word. The author has an hindex of 6, co-authored 7 publications receiving 1373 citations.

AEthereal network on chip: concepts, architectures, and implementations

Abstract: The continuous advances in semiconductor technology enable the integration of increasing numbers of IP blocks in a single SoC. Interconnect infrastructures, such as buses, switches, and networks on chips (NoCs), combine the IPs into a working SoC. Moreover, the industry expects platform-based SoC design to evolve to communication-centric design, with NoCs as a central enabling technology. In this article, we introduce the AEthereal NoC. The tenet of the AEthereal NoC is that guaranteed services (GSs) - such as uncorrupted, lossless, ordered data delivery; guaranteed throughput; and bounded latency - are essential for the efficient construction of robust SoCs. To exploit the NoC capacity unused by the GS traffic, we provide best-effort services.

An efficient on-chip NI offering guaranteed services, shared-memory abstraction, and flexible network configuration

Abstract: We present a network interface (NI) for an on-chip network. Our NI decouples computation from communication by offering a shared-memory abstraction, which is independent of the network implementation. We use a transaction-based protocol to achieve backward compatibility with existing bus protocols such as AXI, OCP, and DTL. Our NI has a modular architecture, which allows flexible instantiation. It provides both guaranteed and best-effort services via connections. These are configured via NI ports using the network itself, instead of a separate control interconnect. An example instance of this NI with four ports has an area of 0.25 mm/sup 2/ after layout in 0.13-/spl mu/m technology, and runs at 500 MHz.

An efficient on-chip network interface offering guaranteed services, shared-memory abstraction, and flexible network configuration

Abstract: In this paper we present a network interface for an on-chip network. Our network interface decouples computation from communication by offering a shared-memory abstraction, which is independent of the network implementation. We use a transaction-based protocol to achieve backward compatibility with existing bus protocols such as AXI, OCP and DTL. Our network interface has a modular architecture, which allows flexible instantiation. It provides both guaranteed and best-effort services via connections. These are configured via network interface ports using the network itself, instead of a separate control interconnect. An example instance of this network interface with 4 ports has an area of 0.143 mm/sup 2/ in a 0.13 /spl mu/m technology, and runs at 500 MHz.

Low cost LDPC decoder for DVB-S2

Abstract: Because of its excellent bit-error-rate performance, the Low-Density Parity-Check (LDPC) algorithm is gaining increased attention in communication standards and literature. The new Digital Video Broadcast via Satellite stan dard (DVB-S2) is the first broadcast standard to include a LDPC-code, and the first implementations are available. In our investigation of generic LDPC-implementations we found that scalable sub-block parallelism enables efficient implementations for a wide range of applications. For the DVB-S2 case, using sub-block parallelism we obtain half the chip-size of known solutions. For the required performance in the normative configurations for the broadcast service (90 Mbps), the area is even 3 compared to the smallest published decoder.

Power-efficient application-specific VLIW processor for turbo decoding

Abstract: A method permits coprocessors to be embedded inside a programmable VLIW processor. Synchronization of the coprocessors and the VLIW processor is determined at compile-time by the VLIW scheduler. The implementation of a power-efficient turbo decoder demonstrates the effectiveness of this method.

A survey of research and practices of Network-on-chip

Abstract: The scaling of microchip technologies has enabled large scale systems-on-chip (SoC). Network-on-chip (NoC) research addresses global communication in SoC, involving (i) a move from computation-centric to communication-centric design and (ii) the implementation of scalable communication structures. This survey presents a perspective on existing NoC research. We define the following abstractions: system, network adapter, network, and link to explain and structure the fundamental concepts. First, research relating to the actual network design is reviewed. Then system level design and modeling are discussed. We also evaluate performance analysis techniques. The research shows that NoC constitutes a unification of current trends of intrachip communication rather than an explicit new alternative.

AEthereal network on chip: concepts, architectures, and implementations

Abstract: The continuous advances in semiconductor technology enable the integration of increasing numbers of IP blocks in a single SoC. Interconnect infrastructures, such as buses, switches, and networks on chips (NoCs), combine the IPs into a working SoC. Moreover, the industry expects platform-based SoC design to evolve to communication-centric design, with NoCs as a central enabling technology. In this article, we introduce the AEthereal NoC. The tenet of the AEthereal NoC is that guaranteed services (GSs) - such as uncorrupted, lossless, ordered data delivery; guaranteed throughput; and bounded latency - are essential for the efficient construction of robust SoCs. To exploit the NoC capacity unused by the GS traffic, we provide best-effort services.

Outstanding Research Problems in NoC Design: System, Microarchitecture, and Circuit Perspectives

Abstract: To alleviate the complex communication problems that arise as the number of on-chip components increases, network-on-chip (NoC) architectures have been recently proposed to replace global interconnects. In this paper, we first provide a general description of NoC architectures and applications. Then, we enumerate several related research problems organized under five main categories: Application characterization, communication paradigm, communication infrastructure, analysis, and solution evaluation. Motivation, problem description, proposed approaches, and open issues are discussed for each problem from system, microarchitecture, and circuit perspectives. Finally, we address the interactions among these research problems and put the NoC design process into perspective.

System-on-Chip: Reuse and Integration

Abstract: Over the past ten years, as integrated circuits became increasingly more complex and expensive, the industry began to embrace new design and reuse methodologies that are collectively referred to as system-on-chip (SoC) design. In this paper, we focus on the reuse and integration issues encountered in this paradigm shift. The reusable components, called intellectual property (IP) blocks or cores, are typically synthesizable register-transfer level (RTL) designs (often called soft cores) or layout level designs (often called hard cores). The concept of reuse can be carried out at the block, platform, or chip levels, and involves making the IP sufficiently general, configurable, or programmable, for use in a wide range of applications. The IP integration issues include connecting the computational units to the communication medium, which is moving from ad hoc bus-based approaches toward structured network-on-chip (NoC) architectures. Design-for-test methodologies are also described, along with verification issues that must be addressed when integrating reusable components.

Predator: a predictable SDRAM memory controller

Abstract: Memory requirements of intellectual property components (IP) in contemporary multi-processor systems-on-chip are increasing. Large high-speed external memories, such as DDR2 SDRAMs, are shared between a multitude of IPs to satisfy these requirements at a low cost per bit. However, SDRAMs have highly variable access times that depend on previous requests. This makes it difficult to accurately and analytically determine latencies and the useful bandwidth at design time, and hence to guarantee that hard real-time requirements are met. The main contribution of this paper is a memory controller design that provides a guaranteed minimum bandwidth and a maximum latency bound to the IPs. This is accomplished using a novel two-step approach to predictable SDRAM sharing. First, we define memory access groups, corresponding to precomputed sequences of SDRAM commands, with known efficiency and latency. Second, a predictable arbiter is used to schedule these groups dynamically at run-time, such that an allocated bandwidth and a maximum latency bound is guaranteed to the IPs. The approach is general and covers all generations of SDRAM. We present a modular implementation of our memory controller that is efficiently integrated into the network interface of a network-on-chip. The area of the implementation is cheap, and scales linearly with the number of IPs. An instance with six ports runs at 200 MHz and requires 0.042 mm2 in 0.13μm CMOS technology.