PyOCN: A Unified Framework for Modeling, Testing, and Evaluating OnChip Networks There is a growing interest in the opensource hardware movement to amortize nonrecurring engineering costs by using plugandplay systemonchip (SoC) designs, where the communication among different components is provided by an onchip interconnection network. Unfortunately, building an onchip network (OCN) that is suitable for a specific SoC design requires the exploration of a large number of design options and involves diverse research methodologies to evaluate performance, area, energy, and timing. In this paper, we propose PyOCN, a unified framework that vertically integrates multiple research methodologies to enable productively exploring the OCN design space. PyOCN is the first comprehensive framework for modeling (e.g., functionallevel, cyclelevel, and registertransferlevel), testing (e.g., unit testing, integration testing, and propertybased random testing), and evaluating (e.g., simulating, generating, and characterizing) onchip interconnection networks. We use a case study based on a 64terminal butterfly network to illustrate the key features of PyOCN and to demonstrate the frameworku0027s potential in productively modeling, testing, and evaluating OCNs.

A design flow for an optimized congestionaware applicationspecific wireless networkonchip architecture Abstract   Wireless NetworksonChip (WiNoC) architecture has emerged as an alternative communication infrastructure for the conventional wireline NoC to achieve higher performance and low energy dissipation in onchip communications. However, as realistic applications have different communication requirements, applicationspecific platforms are attractive to guarantee a specific level of performance. Moreover, the congestion probability over wireless routers is high, because each wireless router is shared by a group of cores. Therefore, we propose a novel methodology for designing an optimized congestionaware applicationspecific WiNoC architecture. This methodology utilizes a novel meshoftree (MoT) topology as a communication infrastructure to exploit the benefits of both mesh and tree topologies. Then, for a given application, the longdistance wirewireless links are inserted into the MoT topology by considering the optimization of system cost and performance simultaneously. Furthermore, a congestionaware layered routing is presented to reduce the congestion probability. Through cycleaccurate simulations, the performance of the proposed architecture has been evaluated and compared with stateoftheart works under both synthetic and realistic traffic patterns in terms of network throughput, latency, and energy consumption. Moreover, the area overhead associated with the proposed WiNoC architecture is investigated. The experimental results confirmed that the proposed MoTbased WiNoC architecture is a very competitive architecture among the alternative WiNoC architectures.