Numeral-Based Crosstalk Avoidance Coding to Reliable NoC Design

Abstract

This paper proposes a Numeral-Based Crosstalk Avoidance Coding (NB-CAC) to protect communication channels of Network-on-Chips (NoCs) against crosstalk faults. The NB-CAC scheme produces code words without bit patterns '101' and '010' to eliminate harmful transition patterns from NoC channels. This is done by the use of a new numeral system proposed in the paper. Using the proposed numeral system, the NB-CAC scheme 1) can be utilized in NoC channels with any arbitrary width, and 2) can be implemented with low area, power, and timing overheads. VHDL and SPICE simulations have been carried out for a wide range of channel widths to evaluate delay, area, and power consumption of the NB-CAC codecs. Results of simulations reveal that the NB-CAC scheme completely removes crosstalk faults from NoC channel. In addition, the NB-CAC scheme provides reductions of 17.3% in area and 31.9% in power-delay product with respect to Fibonacci-based coding which has been recently proposed in literature.