Traffic configuration for evaluating networks on chips

Abstract

Network-on-chip (NoC) provides a network as a global communication platform for future SoC designs. Evaluating network architectures requires both synthetic workloads and application-oriented traffic. We present our traffic configuration methods that can be used to configure uniform and locality traffic as synthetic workloads, and to configure channel-based traffic for specific applications. We also illustrate the significance of applying these methods to configure traffic for network evaluation and system simulation. These traffic configuration methods have been integrated into our Nostrum NoC simulation environment.