Globally-Synchronized Frames for Guaranteed Quality-of-Service in On-Chip Networks [abstract] (IEEE Xplore, PDF)
Jae W. Lee, Man Cheuk Ng, and Krste Asanovic
Proceedings of the 35th IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Computer Architecture (ISCA), June 2008.
Future chip multiprocessors (CMPs) may have hundreds to thousands of
threads competing to access shared resources, and will require
quality-of-service (QoS) support to improve system
utilization. Although there has been significant work in QoS support
within resources such as caches and memory controllers, there has been
less attention paid to QoS support in the multi-hop on-chip networks
that will form an important component in future systems. In this
paper we introduce Globally-Synchronized Frames (GSF), a framework for
providing guaranteed QoS in on-chip networks in terms of minimum
bandwidth and a maximum delay bound. The GSF framework can be easily
integrated in a conventional virtual channel (VC) router without
significantly increasing the hardware complexity. We rely on a fast
barrier network, which is feasible in an on-chip environment, to
efficiently implement GSF. Performance guarantees are verified by both
analysis and simulation. According to our simulations, all concurrent
flows receive their guaranteed minimum share of bandwidth in
compliance with a given bandwidth allocation. The average throughput
degradation of GSF on a 8x8 mesh network is within 10% compared to
the conventional best-effort VC router in most cases.