SoC framework, part 1: NoC overview and layer 1 structure

Those of you who have read my older posts may remember that I am currently pursuing a PhD in computer science at RPI. My research focus is the intersection of computer architecture and security, blurring classical distinctions between components in hopes of solving open problems in security. I'd go into more detail but I have to keep some surprises for my published papers ;)

As part of my research I am developing an FPGA-based SoC to test my theories. Existing frameworks and buses, such as AXI and Wishbone, lacked the flexibility I required so I had to create my own.

The first step was to forgo the classic shared-bus or crossbar topology in favor of a packet-switched network-on-chip (NoC). In order to keep the routing simple I elected to use a quadtree topology, with 16-bit routing addresses, for the network. This maps well to a spatially distributed system and should permit scaling to very large SoCs (up to 65536 IP cores per SoC are theoretically possible, though FPGA gate counts limit feasible designs to much smaller)

Example quadtree (from http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/)

For the remainder of this post series I will use a slightly modified form of CIDR notation, as used with IP subnetting, to describe NoC addresses. For example, "8000/14" is the subnet with routing prefix 1000 0000 0000 00,  consisting of hexadecimal addresses 0x8000, 0x8001, 0x8002, and 0x8002. (Unlike IPv4 addressing, all addresses in the NoC are usable by hosts; there are no reserved broadcast addresses since all traffic is point to point.)

Each router has four downstream and one upstream ports. When a packet arrives at a router it checks if the packet is intended for its subnet; if so the next two bits control which downstream port it is forwarded out of. If the packet belongs to another subnet, it is sent out the upstream port.

Example NoC routing topology

As an example, if the host at 0x8001 wanted to send a message to the host at 0x8003, it would first reach the router for the 0x8000/14 subnet, The router checks the prefix, determines it to be a match, and then reads address bits 1:0 to determine that the packet should go out port 2'b11.

If 0x8001 were instead communicating with 0x8005, the router would instead forward the message out the upstream port. The router at 0x8000/12 would check address bits 3:2, determine that the packet is destined for port 2'b01, and forward to the destination router, which would then use bits 1:0 as the selector and forward out port 2'b01 to the final destination.

The actual network topology is slightly more complex than the diagram above implies, because my framework uses two independent networks, one for bulk data transfer and one for control-plane traffic. Thus, each line in the above diagram is actually four independent one-way links; two upstream and two downstream. Each link consists of a 32-bit data bus plus a few status bits. The actual protocol used will be described in the next post in this series.