Long-Range Asynchronous On-Chip Link Based on Multiple-Valued Single-Track Signaling

Naoya ONIZAWA  Atsushi MATSUMOTO  Takahiro HANYU 

Publication
IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Fundamentals of Electronics, Communications and Computer Sciences  Vol.E95-A  No.6  pp.1018-1029
Publication Date: 2012/06/01
Online ISSN: 1745-1337
Print ISSN: 0916-8508
Type of Manuscript: PAPER
Category: Circuit Theory
Keyword: 
delay-insensitive,  asynchronous circuits,  multiple-valued current-mode (MVCM) circuits,  Network-on-Chip (NoC),  communication link, 

Full Text: PDF(1.5MB)

Summary: 
We have developed a long-range asynchronous on-chip data-transmission link based on multiple-valued single-track signaling for a highly reliable asynchronous Network-on-Chip. In the proposed signaling, 1-bit data with control information is represented by using a one-digit multi-level signal, so serial data can be transmitted asynchronously using only a single wire. The small number of wires alleviates the routing complexity of wiring long-range interconnects. The use of current-mode signaling makes it possible to transmit data at high speed without buffers or repeaters over a long interconnect wire because of the low-voltage swing of signaling, and it leads to low-latency data transmission. We achieve a latency of 0.45 ns, a throughput of 1.25 Gbps, and energy dissipation of 0.58 pJ/bit with a 10-mm interconnect wire under a 0.13 µm CMOS technology. This represents an 85% decrease in latency, a 150% increase in throughput, and a 90% decrease in energy dissipation compared to a conventional serial asynchronous data-transmission link.