A Network-on-Chip for Configurable Monitors

Overview

This work is motivated by the increasing importance of on-chip monitoring in modern processors. As silicon processes scale, on-chip system will require  multiple monitors that performs assessment of performance, security, and physical characteristics that change during the operation of a device. The parameters that can be monitored include temperature, voltage, processor activity and power supply fluctuation, etc. It is expected that future on-chip systems will generally include numerous embedded monitors. These monitors speed up the computation of environmental monitoring compared to software execution. They provide quickly system performance evaluation without interfering with the primary operation of the system. They provide tradeoffs in terms of throughput, area, latency, reliability, power and energy in order to meet real time constraints. Our monitoring-based approach requires the integration of multiple monitors to form a complete chip subsystem devoted to monitoring.

A main aspect of the work involves the architectural definition of configurable monitors, lightweight components which can collect and potentially evaluate data from each target core or sensor. A second key feature of our approach is a low-latency monitor network-on-chip which interconnects the on-chip monitors and transmit monitor packet with low latency. Data collected from the multiple monitors via the network are collated by a programmable monitor executive processor (MEP). In response to abnormal behavior, the MEP can issue commands to control the operation of the on-chip system. For example, it can override the power management, disable I/O operations, or throttle voltage/frequency. The integration of the monitors and associated network requires system level validation via architectural and circuit-level simulation. A communication protocol is developed to allow for priority-driven data transfer of monitor data to the MEP.

This work is funded by Semiconductor Research Corporation under Task 1595.001.

Publications:

J. Lu, R. Tessier and W. Burleson, Reinforcement Learning for Thermal-aware Many-core Task Allocation, in the Proceedings of the ACM Great Lakes Symposium on VLSI, Pittsburgh, PA, May 2015. (pdf)

J. Zhao, J. Lu, W. Burleson and R. Tessier, A Broadcast-Enabled Sensing System for Embedded Multi-core Processors, in the Proceedings of the IEEE International Symposium on VLSI, Tampa, FL, July 2014. (pdf)

J. Lu, R. Tessier and W. Burleson, Dynamic On-Chip Thermal Sensor Calibration Using Performance Counters, in IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems, vol. 33, no. 6, June 2014, pp. 853-866. (pdf)

J. Lu, R. Tessier, and W. Burleson Collaborative Calibration of On-Chip Thermal Sensors Using Performance Counters, in the Proceedings of the IEEE/ACM International Conference on Computer-Aided Design, San Jose, CA, November 2012. (pdf)

J. Zhao, J. Lu, W. Burleson and R. Tessier Run-time Probabilistic Detection of Miscalibrated Thermal Sensors in Many-core Systems, in the Proceedings of the IEEE/ACM Design Automation and Test in Europe Conference, Grenoble, France, March 2013. (pdf)

J. Zhao, W. Burleson and R. Tessier, Distributed Sensor Data Processing for Many-cores, in the Proceedings of the ACM Great Lakes Symposium on VLSI, Salt Lake City, UT, May 2012. (pdf)

J. Zhao, S. Madduri, R. Vadlamani, W. Burleson and R. Tessier, A Dedicated Monitoring Infrastructure for Multicore Processors, in IEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integration Systems, vol. 19, no. 6, June 2011, pp. 1011-1022.  (pdf)

J. Zhao, B. Datta, W. Burleson and R. Tessier, Thermal-aware Voltage Droop Compensation for Multi-core Architectures, in the Proceedings of the ACM Great Lakes Symposium on VLSI, Providence, RI, May 2010.  (pdf)

R. Vadlamani, J. Zhao, W. Burleson and R. Tessier, Multicore Soft Error Rate Stabilization Using Adaptive Dual Modular Redundancy, in the Proceedings of the IEEE/ACM Design Automation and Test in Europe Conference, Dresden, Germany, March 2010. (pdf)

S. Madduri, R. Vadlamani, W. Burleson and R. Tessier, A Monitor Interconnect and Support Subsystem for Multicore Processors, in the Proceedings of the IEEE/ACM Design Automation and Test in Europe Conference, Nice, France, April 2009.  (pdf)

What's New

• Paper accepted by GLSVLSI 2015
• Paper accepted by ISVLSI 2014
• Paper accepted by TCAD 2014
• Paper accepted by ICCAD 2012
• Paper accepted by DATE 2013
• Paper accepted by GLSVLSI 2012
• Paper accepted by TVLSI
• Paper accepted by GLSVLSI 2010
• Paper accepted by DATE 2010