FIELD OF THE INVENTION

The field of invention relates generally to computer systems and, more specifically but not exclusively relates to architectures and methods of operation for on-chip routers.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Recent advancements in processor architectures have resulted in an ever more prevalent use of multi-core processors in the mainstream of computing across a wide range of market segments. The debut of Intel® Corporation's Xeon 8-core "Nehalem EX" processor and the AMD's Opteron 6-core "Istanbul" processor in 2009 was followed by Intel's 10-core "Westmere-EX" and AMD's 12-core "Magny-Cours" processors. Intel's recent Single Chip Cloud computing (SCC) platform integrates 48 Intel Architecture cores on a single chip. Several non-x86 multi-core processors have also been showcased, including STI's 8-core Cell processor, Sun's 8-core Niagara, Victoria Falls (16-core), Tilera (36, 64, and 100 core versions), and Intel's TeraFLOPS Processor prototype. This overall trend toward a higher core count is expected to continue and create mainstream terascale processors with 50 to 100+ cores in the next 3-5 years.

A scalable on-chip interconnection network fabric is a key ingredient in the architecture of terascale processors. For a commercial design the interconnect architecture should offer the flexibility to scale-up or reduce the number of processor cores, be amenable to high-volume manufacturing and provide reliability. Additionally, the interconnect needs to address a principle problem of providing high performance while optimizing power consumption.

As illustrated in Figure 1, one popular topology employs a plurality of processing elements (PE) or "tiles" configured in a two-dimensional (2D) array and interconnected via a 2D mesh interconnect 100 comprising multiple interconnect links 102. Each PE node 104 includes a network interface 106 that is connected to the interconnect mesh at a respective router 108, which may be configured as 5 -port crossbar, 4-port crossbar, or 3 -port crossbar depending on its location, as illustrated. The crossbar is one of the two major architectural contributors of the router power (the other significant contributor being the packet buffers). For example, crossbar power consumption is 15% of the total router power in Intel's TeraFLOPS processor. In the MIT RAW processor, the crossbar consumes 30% of the power, while in the TRIPS processor data network it consumes 33% of network power. Crossbars also collectively occupy significant layout area. Thus it would be advantageous to reduce power and/or the area occupied by the crossbars.

Earlier work on crossbar power and area reduction has used two basic approaches: decomposition and segmentation. Under the decomposition approach, a functionally larger crossbar is made of smaller sub-crossbars, resulting in a smaller area and power but restricting connectivity between some input-output pairs and/or concurrency among multiple input-output pairs. The connectivity restriction, if any, may in turn restrict the routing algorithms available for the topology. Also, the concurrency restriction may impact overall latency and throughput. The segmentation approach is focused on power reduction by energizing only the necessary wire- segment of the crossbar for establishing input-output connectivity through the use of tri-state buffers. However, the segmentation itself does not provide any area reduction. Moreover, such designs typically isolate and focus only on crossbar ignoring its inter-connectivity with other logic within the router, placement of ports, flit-buffers and drivers and inter router connectivity, all of which present real constraints. This often leads to the unrealistic optimization assuming crossbar layout from a logical view without considering physical design constraints.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The foregoing aspects and many of the attendant advantages of this invention will become more readily appreciated as the same becomes better understood by reference to the following detailed description, when taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, wherein like reference numerals refer to like parts throughout the various views unless otherwise specified:

Figure 1 is a schematic block diagram of an exemplary 2D mesh interconnect and router configuration;

Figure 2 is a schematic block diagram illustrating the configuration of a conventional 5x5 crossbar and associated 5-port router;

Figures 3a and 3b are logical representations corresponding to respective row and column 3x3 sub-crossbar designs, according to one embodiment;

Figure 3c is a logical representation of one embodiment of a MoDe-X-Single crossbar design;

Figure 3d is a logical representation of one embodiment of a MoDe-X-Dual crossbar design;

Figures 4a, 4b, and 4c respectively show sets of arbiters corresponding to a generic 5x5 crossbar, a MoDe-X-Single crossbar, and a MoDe-X-Dual crossbar;

Figure 5a illustrates a logical representation of a generic 5x5 crossbar without layout considerations, while Figure 5b depicts one example of a crossbar that provides similar 5x5 connectivity while further considering physical layout of the various input and output ports to reduce wiring and area;

Figures 6a and 6b respectively show layout aware row and column 3x3 sub-crossbar designs, according to one embodiment; Figure 6c is a layout-aware MoDe-X-Single crossbar design, according to one embodiment;

Figure 6d is a layout-aware MoDe-X-Dual crossbar design, according to one embodiment; Figure 7a is a layout-aware MoDe-X-Single router design employing external Feeder Logic, according to one embodiment;

Figure 7b is a layout-aware MoDe-X-Dual router design employing external Feeder Logic, according to one embodiment;

Figure 8a is a schematic diagram illustrating circuitry for effecting external Feeder Logic; Figure 8b is a schematic diagram illustrating internal Feeder Logic embedded on crossbar circuitry;

Figure 9 is a schematic diagram illustrating details of the input selector of Figure 8b, according to one embodiment;

Figure 10a is a schematic circuit layout diagram showing circuit layout configuration and corresponding metal layers for a MoDe-X-Single crossbar including embedded Feeder Logic, according to one embodiment;

Figure 10b is a schematic circuit layout diagram showing circuit layout configuration and corresponding metal layers for a MoDe-X-Dual crossbar including embedded Feeder Logic, according to one embodiment;

Figure 1 1a is schematic block diagram illustrating a MoDe-X-Single router overall architecture, according to one embodiment;

Figure l ib is schematic block diagram illustrating a MoDe-X-Dual router overall architecture, according to one embodiment; and

Figure 12 is a schematic block diagram of an exemplary System on a Chip (SoC) including a 2D mesh interconnect and processing element configuration including 5-port routers that may be implemented as MoDe-X-Single and/or MoDe-X-Dual routers.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

Embodiments of apparatus, micro-architectures, and method of operation for a layout- aware modular decoupled crossbar for on-chip interconnects are described herein. In the following description, numerous specific details are set forth to provide a thorough understanding of embodiments of the invention. One skilled in the relevant art will recognize, however, that the invention can be practiced without one or more of the specific details, or with other methods, components, materials, etc. In other instances, well-known structures, materials, or operations are not shown or described in detail to avoid obscuring aspects of the invention.

Reference throughout this specification to "one embodiment" or "an embodiment" means that a particular feature, structure, or characteristic described in connection with the embodiment is included in at least one embodiment of the present invention. Thus, the appearances of the phrases "in one embodiment" or "in an embodiment" in various places throughout this specification are not necessarily all referring to the same embodiment. Furthermore, the particular features, structures, or characteristics may be combined in any suitable manner in one or more embodiments.

In accordance with aspects of the embodiments described herein, a micro-architecture for a power and area efficient router for a 2D mesh interconnect is provided. The router microarchitecture employs an efficient crossbar implementation, called MoDe-X that uses a modular- decoupled crossbar that incorporates dimensional decomposition and segmentation to achieve power and area savings. However, unlike most prior work in this area that considers only logical representation of the crossbars, MoDe-X crossbars and associated routers employ physically- aware designs accounting for the actual layout of router components to reflect practical design considerations.

In order to better understand the operation and advantages of the MoDe-X crossbar and router architectures, a discussion of the conventional approach is first presented. Figure 2 depicts details of a conventional generic input-buffered on-chip router 200 that may be implemented for 5-port routers in the 2D mesh on-die interconnect shown in Figure 1 and discussed above. As shown in Figure 2, router 200 comprises several functional modules and has 5 input/output ports (i.e., Local, North, East, South, and West) with each input port having a set of virtual channels and associated buffer space. The input virtual channels and buffers, as well as the crossbar 202 and interconnect links are major components of the data path of the router. The control logic includes a routing computation block 204, a virtual channel allocator 206, and switch arbitration logic 208.

When a message (e.g., comprising data encapsulated in a flow control unit or "flit') is received from either a local tile or from a neighboring router, it is first stored in an input buffer. Then, the routing computation logic 204 determines which output ports it can use. Typically, a simple deterministic X-Y routing algorithm is used. In X-Y routing, messages are forwarded to X-direction first and, if the displacement in X-direction reaches 0, then it is forwarded in the Y- direction. The X-Y routing algorithm is widely used in 2D mesh interconnects due to its simplicity and inherent deadlock freedom. However, such deterministic routing algorithms do not consider network traffic when making routing decisions and thus may be unsuitable for traffic patterns that may result in network imbalance. In such cases, a fully adaptive routing algorithm can be used instead to dynamically balance network load. However, adaptive routing algorithms are generally more complex and may require more network resources. Once a routing decision has been made, the Virtual Channel (VC) allocation logic 206 assigns an output VC the message can use and if another message is also contending for the same output VC it performs arbitration among them and selects one winner per output VC. The Switch Arbitration (SA) logic 208 arbitrates among multiple flits from different input ports to determine which of the flits can use a given crossbar output port. Since a typical on-chip router has 5 input ports (one injection port from the local tile and four ports from each cardinal direction), a 5x5 crossbar is generally used and a maximum of five concurrent transfers can occur during each cycle. However, there are also router designs with a higher number of ports for specific purposes, and corresponding crossbars employ more complex designs to support the additional ports. The switch arbitration logic consists of several arbiters (described below in further detail) and the grant signals from the arbiter logic are fed to the crossbar control logic to appropriately turn on/off the crossbar connection points or switches (typically, tri-state buffers or pass gates are used in matrix-type crossbars). Finally, the winners from switch arbitration will go through the crossbar and then either exit to the local tile or move on to next router via inter-router interconnect links.

In general, these router modules are implemented in a pipelined manner to improve performance. To achieve optimal pipeline performance, the router's pipeline should be carefully designed considering physical layout of the design such that timing requirement of each stage is well balanced. For this, the critical path analysis should be performed at the beginning of the design phase. For example, the switch arbitration logic determines the winner for an output port and then sends the grant signal back to input port to indicate the winner. This is usually in the critical path and includes significant amount of wire delay (between switch arbitration logic near the output port and the input buffer control and VC context management logic). Depending on the physical layout of the ports, this timing can significantly vary (wire length within some input-output port pairs may be short enough to meet the tight timing requirement but others may not, which will eventually dominate the pipeline timing). Thus, it is very important to design router architectures with physical aspects in mind as opposed to only considering logical representations of the architectures.

Among various router modules, the flit-buffer and crossbar are typically two major power consumers and optimization of these modules will often directly affect overall power consumption. While buffer power can be optimized by analyzing the minimal buffer requirement or using a shared buffer architecture, the crossbar optimization is not easily viable by itself since it typically requires changes in other modules such as switch arbitration logic and routing computation logic.

Modular Decoupled Crossbar Architectures Various deficiencies in the conventional 5-port crossbar approach are addressed by novel router architectures employing a modular decoupled crossbar design ("MoDe-X") that employs both a modular segmented design and a decoupled crossbar architecture. Due to the decoupled nature of the crossbar, its area requirement is reduced and, as a result, overall crossbar power consumption can be significantly decreased. Moreover, MoDe-X routers are designed considering the physical layout of the crossbar to minimize area and timing inconsistency between logical and physical crossbar representations.

The basic building block of the MoDe-X router is a 3x3 sub-crossbar, such as illustrated by a 3x3 Row sub-crossbar module 300 in Figure 3a and a 3x3 Column sub-crossbar module 302 in Figure 3b. Row sub-crossbar module 300 has two input/output port pairs (Win / W _ou t and E _m / E _out ) along the same dimension and a local injection/ejection port (L _m / L _out ). The non-injecting input ports (Win and Ei„) have direct connection to the output ports in their opposite direction (E _out and W _ou t), respectively and they are also connected to L _m and L _out ports via tri-state buffers 304. Each of the direct links (Em ~ W _ou t / W _m E _out ) has a tri-state buffer 306 in the middle to ensure concurrent transfers by separating the link into two segments (e.g., to support both Li _n ~ W _o ut and E _m -> L _ou t concurrently). It is also used for power-saving purposes; if E _m ~ L _o ut is the only transfer occurring in the crossbar, for example, the left half segment of the crossbar can be totally shutdown. Column sub-crossbar module 302 shown in Figure 3b is similarly configured to Row sub-crossbar module 300, but is used for providing a 3x3 sub- crossbar function for North and South ports rather than East and West ports.

As shown in Figure 3c, a pair of 3x3 sub-crossbar modules (i.e., Row sub-crossbar module 300 and Column sub-crossbar module 302) are combined via a local module 308 to form a 5x5 crossbar (referred to herein as MoDe-X-Single). The L _m and L _ou t ports have connections to both sub-crossbar modules. Note that the architecture in Figure 3c is not a full 5x5 crossbar by itself, since there is no connection between Row and Column sub-crossbar modules. At described below, the MoDe-X architecture employs additional wiring and switched connections to direct flits to an appropriate sub-crossbar that is later embedded on top of the crossbar.

The MoDe-X architecture can be extended to provide dual injection ports such that each sub-crossbar has a dedicated injection/ejection port. One embodiment of the extended design (referred herein as MoDe-X-Dual) is shown in Figure 3d, which couples Row and Column sub- crossbar modules 300 and 302 to a local module 310. This simplifies the switch arbitration logic and reduces the size of the arbiters inside. The dual ejection configuration also supports concurrent injection/ejection to/from the on-chip network and can improve network performance.

Switch Arbitration Logic Typical switch arbitration runs in two phases: 1) Local Arbitration (Phase 1), which selects one winner for each input port among requests from the VCs within the same input port, and 2) Global Arbitration (Phase 2), which selects one winner for each output port among requests from the winners of the Local Arbitration.

Figure 4a shows the architecture of the switch arbitration logic for a generic 5x5 crossbar where each input port has v VCs. For Phase 1, each input port requires one (v:l) arbiter, totaling five (v: l) arbiters per router. Then for Phase 2, each output port requires one (5: 1) arbiter, totaling five (5: 1) arbiters per router.

Since the crossbar designs of the MoDe-X-Single and MoDe-X-Dual routers have a different number of input/output ports, the size and number of arbiters change. The arbitration logic design for one embodiment of a MoDe-X-Single router is shown in Figure 4b, and for Phase 1 it employs the same arbiter design as a generic 5x5 crossbar. However, the Phase 2 arbitration design is different, since the crossbar is now decoupled. Therefore, each of the non- ejecting (non-local) output ports employ one (3: 1) arbiter, whereas the ejecting output port still employs one (5: 1) arbiter as in the generic 5x5 architecture since all input ports need to be able to eject messages through this port.

In the MoDe-X-Dual router design, however, the arbiters for injection/ejection ports also need to be decoupled to provide dual connections (logically, it is operated as a 6x6 crossbar). As shown in Figure 4c, the arbitration logic is now totally decoupled, since each of the decoupled switch arbitration logic does not need to consider inputs from the other arbitration logic.

Overall, the complexity of the switch arbiters significantly decreases in the proposed MoDe-X-Single and MoDe-X-Dual routers, as clearly shown in Figures 4a-c. The details of the arbiter requirements for all three cases are summarized in Table 1 below. In addition, the reduction of the arbiter size from 5: 1 to 3: 1 reduces arbitration time, thus reducing the overall pipeline cycle.

Table 1. Total required arbiter modules for SA (per router)

Layout-Aware Physical Design

The designs shown in Figures 3a-d and 4a-c are logical representations of crossbars configured to meet certain connectivity and arbitration criteria (such as full 5x5 crossbar routing support). However, in addition to meeting such criteria, it is important to consider the layout of the physical design. For example, considering the connectivity to neighbor nodes, it would be better to locate input port buffers closer to their corresponding neighbors than having the input port buffers on one side. Similarly, the aspect ratio and orientation of flit buffer SRAMs may require that flit buffers are oriented in a particular configuration, such as in one dimension. It is also desirable to avoid excessive wiring when optimizing the layout for a power and performance focused design.

Having this in mind, even a generic 5x5 crossbar needs to be designed differently considering layout requirements. For example, Figure 5a illustrates a logical representation of a 5x5 crossbar without layout considerations, while Figure 5b depicts one example of a crossbar that provides similar 5x5 connectivity while further considering physical layout of the various input and output ports to reduce wiring and area.

As with the generic 5x5 crossbar layout shown in Figure 5 a, the logical representations of the MoDe-X router layouts shown in Figures 3a-d depict the input ports on the same side. Accordingly, it is advantageous to reconfigure these layouts in view of physical layout considerations. Embodiments corresponding to an exemplary set of crossbar configurations comprising modifications of the foregoing logical representations of the MoDe-X Single and Dual routers employing physical layout considerations are shown in Figures 6a-c.

In further detail, Figures 6a and 6b respectively show Row and Column sub-crossbar modules 600R and 600C, which are configured similarly with the exception that a Row sub- crossbar module 300a is used for connecting West and East ports to the local ports in a local module 602a and a Column sub-crossbar module 302a is used for connecting the North and South ports with the local ports in another local module 602b. Each of these modules includes a plurality of tri-state buffers 304 for switching the datapaths between the local ports Li _n and L _out and the row-wise directional ports (i.e., East and West ports Ejn / E _out and Wi„ / W _ou t ) or columnwise directional ports (i.e., North and South ports Ni„ / N _ou t and Ni„ / N _ou t ) and tri-state buffers 306 for separating the links depicted horizontally into two segments (e.g., to support both Li _n ~ W _o ut and Ei _n -> L _out concurrently and -> N _ou t and Si„ L _out concurrently).

As shown in Figure 6c, a layout aware MoDe-X-Single crossbar 606 comprising a 5x5 crossbar design that is formed by combining the Row and Column sub-crossbar modules 300a and 300b with a local module 604, which in turn is formed by combining the wiring and switches (i.e., tri-state buffers 304) of local modules 602a and 602b into a single local module (note that the tri-state buffers 306 in the Li _n / L _out wires in Figures 6a and 6b are reconfigured in Figure 6c as illustrated by the dashed circles in Figures 6a-c). In this manner, the Li _n / L _out ports in local module 604 have connection to both the Row and Column sub-crossbar modules.

Figure 6c shows an exemplary embodiment of an extended MoDe-X-Dual crossbar 608 comprising a 6x6 crossbar design employing a local module 610 with dual injection. This simplifies the switch arbitration logic and reduces the size of the arbiters inside (as shown in Figure 4c above), and removes the four tri-state buffers in the local module, but comes with increased wiring to/from the local tile. However, this dual ejection allows concurrent injection/ejection to/from the on-chip network and can help improve network performance after optimization.

Feeder Wiring and Logic

In the MoDe-X-Single crossbar 606 of Figure 6c, the input port in the Row sub-crossbar module 300a cannot send a flit to an output port of the Column sub-crossbar module 302a and vice versa. Therefore, for this decoupled crossbar to support full 5x5 crossbar connectivity, additional circuitry comprising wiring, switches and logic is employed to selectively feed flits to appropriate sub-crossbar ports. This additional circuitry is referred to as Feeder Wiring and Feeder Logic.

Figure 7a depicts a MoDe-X-Single router 700 the supports Row to Column routing using one approach that employs feeder wiring and logic comprising additional switching and routing circuitry that is external to the crossbar area. In addition, MoDe-X-Single crossbar 700 includes logic and buffers for effecting associated functionality to support 5x5 crossbar operations.

As illustrated, MoDe-X-Single router 700 employs the same Row, Column, and local sub- crossbar modules 300a, 302a, and 604 as MoDe-X-Single crossbar 606 of Figure 6c. The additional circuitry and logic includes five shared buffers, including a shared d _x + t _yx buffer 702, a shared d _x + tyx buffer 704, a shared d _y +t _xy buffer 706, a shared d _y +t _xy buffer 708, and a shared injection buffer 710. A demultiplexer (demux) is located at each of the directional input ports, including a West input demux 712, an East input demux 714, a South input demux 716, and a North input demux 718. The operation of the Row, local, and Column sub-crossbar modules is facilitated by routing computation logic 720, VC (Virtual Channel) allocation logic 722, and switch arbitration logic 724.

A similarly configured MoDe-X-Dual router 726 is shown in Figure 7b. MoDe-X-Dual router 726 employs the same Row, Column, and local sub-crossbar modules 300a, 302a, and 610 as MoDe-X-Dual crossbar 608 of Figure 6d. The additional circuitry and logic includes six shared buffers, including a shared d _x + t _yx buffer 702, a shared d _x + t^ buffer 704, a shared d _y +t _xy buffer 706, a shared d _y +t _xy buffer 708, a shared X injection (inj _x ) buffer 728, and a shared Y-injection (inj _y ) buffer 730. As before, demuxes are located at each of the directional input ports, including a West input demux 712, an East input demux 714, a South input demux 716, and a North input demux 718. The operation of the Row, local, and Column sub-crossbar modules is facilitated by routing computation logic 720a, VC allocation logic 722a, and switch arbitration logic 724a. The use of external feeder wiring and demuxes increases the area occupied by the routers, while also increasing the feeder wire path lengths. However, in some embodiments the feeder wiring and associated switches are implemented internal to the router crossbar area, leading to both area reduction and power savings. This is accomplished by moving the feeder wires between the input demuxes 712 and 718 and shared buffers 702a and 706a as shown in Figure 8a, to between the input buffer and sub-crossbars modules as shown in Figure 8b. With this relocation of feeder wires and optimizations described below, power consumption can be significantly reduced by removing input demuxes and decreasing the shared buffer size (by reducing the number of input ports from 2 to 1). In one embodiment, feeder wire embedding is implemented in combination with a single input-port shared-buffer design, as shown in Figure 8b. Moreover, overall router area can be reduced by overlaying the Feeder Wires over crossbar wires as described below.

In further detail, under the Feeder Logic 800 configuration shown in Figure 8b, input Wjn and in flits are received at shared input buffers 802 and 804. Input Selector logic 806 is then used to determine how the flits in input buffers 802 and 804 are fed to Row sub-crossbar module 300a and Column sub-crossbar module 302a. Note that a shared-buffer architecture is used to improve router buffer utilization and the Feeder Logic is used to determine which sub- crossbar the output port of the shared input buffer should drive to route the input flit. In the illustrated embodiment, the allowed connection patterns between the two shared buffers and the two sub-crossbars are limited due to this selective driving; either two straight (άχχ and d _yy) or two crossing connections <t _xy and t _yx) as shown in Figure 8b are allowed to avoid data mingling. Such decisions should be made before the Switch Arbitration stage in order to circumvent any delay in the critical path of the router pipeline. For this purpose, Input Selector logic 806 is configured to determine the connection pattern based on predetermined criteria such as ratio of straight and turning flits in the shared buffer, recent transfer history, round-robin, etc. As a result, Input Selector logic 806 can run in parallel with other router pipelines without increasing the critical path delay.

Figure 9 shows the basic architecture of one embodiment of the Input Selector logic 806, which takes buffer status as inputs 900 and 902 and generates selection signals 904 and 906 that are directly fed to arbiters 910 and 912 in the switch allocation logic. Then each of arbiters 910 and 912 will consider only those requests that the selection signal indicates during its operation.

As discussed above, to further reduce the overall area requirement, the Feeder Logic (i.e., Feeder Wires, switches and Input Selector logic) can be embedded onto the existing crossbar circuitry. Typically, crossbars use only a limited number of metal layers due to design constraints, and thus have some room for additional wiring in other unused metal layers. Therefore, the Feeder Logic wiring can be placed on metal layers that are not used by the crossbar as long as the wiring does not interfere with the crossbar wiring. Figure 10a shows an example layout of an MoDe-X-Single crossbar with embedded Feeder Logic, while Figure 10b shows an example layout of an MoDe-X-Dual crossbar with embedded Feeder Logic. In Figures 10a and 10b the larger squares are provided to illustrate an exemplary number of wire buses. Also, the layout of wiring on the various metal layers is depicted via the use of different line types, as illustrated in the legend toward the bottom of the figures.

The Feeder Logic's connection pattern is controlled by two tri-state buffers, as depicted in the Feeder Wire schematic in the center of Figures 10a. For example, if a flit in the North input buffer is supposed to go straight, the horizontal tri-state buffer ( Ά ' in Figure 10a)) will become active and the output of the shared buffer will have a direct connection to the Row module sub- crossbar. Likewise, if it needs to make a turn, the vertical tri-state buffer ( 'B ' in Figure 10a) between two modular sub-crossbars will be activated and the buffer output will be connected to the Column module sub-crossbar.

Note that most of the Feeder Logic wires are overlaid right below (or above) the crossbar wires without incurring area overhead (two parallel wire buses in both horizontal and vertical directions that are enclosed within the same square can be safely overlapped since they use different metal layers). However, the overall crossbar size will increase slightly, although minimal, due to additional tri-state buffers that are used to control the connection patterns. It is further noted that in the MoDe-X-Dual crossbar of Figure 10b the local injection port (using the M6 layer) and ejection port (using the M4 layer) can be overlapped, maintaining the same number of horizontal wire buses as in the MoDe-X-Single crossbar case.

Figures 11a and l ib respectively show exemplary embodiments of overall architectures for a MoDe-X-Single router 1 100 and a MoDe-X-Dual router 1102, with the Feeder wires, Input Selector logic, and tri-state buffer switches not shown for clarity. It shall be understood that an actual implementation of MoDe-X-Single router 1100 and a MoDe-X-Dual router 1102 would include Feeder Logic including associated Feeder wires and tri-state buffer switches, such as illustrated in Figures 10a and 10b.

MoDe-X-Single router 1 100 employs five input buffers including a West input buffer 1104, a North input buffer 1106, an East input buffer 1 108, a South input buffer 11 10, and a local input buffer 11 12. The West and East input buffers 1 104 and 1108 are fed into a Row sub-crossbar module 300a, while the North and South input buffers are fed into a Column sub- crossbar module 302a. Local input buffer 1 1 12 is fed into a local module 604, which is operatively coupled between Row sub-crossbar module 300a and Column sub-crossbar module 302a. The operation of the row, local, and Column sub-crossbar modules is facilitated by routing computation logic 720b, VC (Virtual Channel) allocation logic 722b, and switch arbitration logic 724b.

MoDe-X-Dual router 1 102 is similarly configured to single injection MD router 1 100, with the substitution of local module 608 for local module 604 and the addition of a sixth input buffer. As shown in Figure 1 lb, the six input buffers of MoDe-X-Dual router 1102 include a West input buffer 1104a, a North input buffer 1 106a, an East input buffer 1108a, a South input buffer 1 110a, and two local input buffer 11 12 and 11 13. The West and East input buffers 1104a and 1 108a are fed into a Row sub-crossbar module 300a, while the North and South input buffers 1 106a and 1 110a are fed into a Column sub-crossbar module 302a. Local input buffers 11 12 and 11 13 are fed into a local module 608, which is operatively coupled between Row sub-crossbar module 300a and Column sub-crossbar module 302a. The operation of the Row, local, and Column sub-crossbar modules is facilitated by routing computation logic 720c, VC (Virtual Channel) allocation logic 722c, and switch arbitration logic 724c.

For both of the MoDe-X-Single and MoDe-X-Dual routers, each input port needs only two Virtual Channel (VC) sets - one for intra-dimensional (d _xx or d _yy; going straight) packets and one for inter-dimensional (t _xy or t _yx - turning) packets. Since a shared buffer architecture within each physical input port is employed to maximize buffer utilization, these VC sets share buffer space. Also, as described above, the injection/ejection link pair can be overlapped in the layout in MoDe-X-Dual router case, as indicated by the dashed circles in Figure 1 lb.

Area Estimates

The area of the crossbar is determined by the minimal width and height of the wire buses. Typically, horizontal and vertical wire buses reside on different metal layers and thus, the width/height of them differs among each other. To correctly estimate the width of a wire bus, the wire pitch and spacing of each metal layer is considered. Table 2 summarized the minimal crossbar area requirement for four different architectures in 45nm technology and the MD crossbars have more than 40% area savings over generic counterparts. For generic 5x5 crossbar, the layout shown in Figures 9a and 9b was used.

Area MD Area Saving over Generic

Generic (5 port) 292,035 urn ²

MD-Single (5 port) 175,229 urn ² 40%

Generic (6 port) 394,234 urn ²

MD-Dual (6 port) 230,775 urn ² 41%

Table 2. Minimal crossbar area requirement (Wire Bus BW: 128bits)

However, these figures do not consider the height of buffers and flip-flops connected to the crossbar and thus, they are not representative of actual crossbar area requirement. Table 3 shows the area considering these additional modules. Since these buffers and flip-flops are typically located in both left and right side of the crossbar, they do not affect crossbar width (of course, they affect overall router width) and only crossbar height is subject to change. The minimal height for the optimized buffer and flip-flops is calculated and found to always be greater than the minimal crossbar height requirements. Therefore, the height for all four crossbar architectures is set to that of the buffer and flip-flops combined and as a result, the area saving is less (still greater than 20%, though). Note that the numbers shown here are estimates and shown just for relative comparison between different crossbar architectures. Actual crossbar area needs to be determined considering several other design factors.

Table 3.

Minimal Crossbar Area Requirement with Buffer and Flip-Flop (Wire Bus BW: 128bits)

The area saving indicates reduced wire length, which in turn, leads to reduced wire power consumption. Also, combined with the segmented design of the crossbar, overall crossbar power saving is expected to be significant. Considering the fact that crossbar is one of the major power consumers among the modules in an on-chip router, this indicates significant power saving in overall on-chip router. If we can further optimize buffers and flip-flops such that their height is not greater than crossbar's minimal height requirement, then we can further reduce crossbar size as shown in Table 2 and can obtain even larger power savings.

An additional advantage of reduced crossbar area is reduced RC (Resistive-Capacitive) delay of the control path. For example, in view of the reduced wire lengths, the RC delay for an arbitration grant signal from an output port to an input port will be significantly reduced.

Exemplary SoC Configuration having NoC employing MoDe-X routers A system 1200 including an SoC 1202 having an exemplary configuration under which aspects of the embodiments described herein may be implemented is shown in Figure 12. SoC 1202 includes a Network on a Chip (NoC) 1204 comprising a 2D Mesh interconnect fabric having a plurality of interconnect links 1206 and a plurality of routers 1208. Each router includes a local module that is coupled to a respective processing element (PE) 1210 at a network interface (NI) 1212, forming a 2D array of PE's. Although 16 PE's are shown in Figure 12, this is merely illustrative, as the number of PE's can vary from a lesser number of PE's to many more, such as but not limited to 8, 24, 32, 48, 64, etc., as well as numbers in-between.

The PE's are illustrative of various types of processing elements commonly used in SoCs, such as processor cores, hardware accelerators (e.g., video decoders, graphics, imaging, etc), memory-related components (e.g., memory controllers), and I/O interfaces (e.g., PCIe, QPI, etc.). In the illustrated embodiment, a pair of memory controllers 1216 and 1218 are depicted as coupled to respective memory blocks 1220 and 1222 (depicted as DIMM (Dual in-line Memory Modules)) and to respective routers on SoC 1202. Also depicted is a system interface 1224, which is illustrative of one or more interfaces between SoC 1202 and other system components that are not shown. As will be recognized by those skilled in the art, an actual SoC would include additional components that are not shown in order to not obscure the aspects illustrated in Figure 12.

In further detail, a portion of routers 1208 provide five-way connections (e.g., North, East, South, West, and Local) while others provide four-way and three-way connections, as illustrated. The routers at each five-way connection may be implemented as either a MoDe-X-Single or MoDe-X-Dual router (depending on whether one or two local injection ports are to be implemented) configured in accordance with the embodiments presented above. Optionally, a mixture of MoDe-X-Single and MoDe-X-Dual routers may be implemented for different five- way connected routers. Generally, the four- way and three-way connected routers may be implemented using conventional architectures. As will be recognized, for 2D PE arrays configured as shown in Figure 12, as the number of routers with five-way connections increases as the number of PE's increase. Accordingly, the larger the number of PE's, the greater the reduction in router area and power savings when using MoDe-X-Single routers and/or MoDe-X- Dual routers in place of conventional 5-port routers.

The above description of illustrated embodiments of the invention, including what is described in the Abstract, is not intended to be exhaustive or to limit the invention to the precise forms disclosed. While specific embodiments of, and examples for, the invention are described herein for illustrative purposes, various equivalent modifications are possible within the scope of the invention, as those skilled in the relevant art will recognize. These modifications can be made to the invention in light of the above detailed description. The terms used in the following claims should not be construed to limit the invention to the specific embodiments disclosed in the specification and the drawings. Rather, the scope of the invention is to be determined entirely by the following claims, which are to be construed in accordance with established doctrines of claim interpretation.