A Coding Approach to Improve the Energy Efficiency of Approximate NoCs

authored by

Amir Najafi, Lennart Bamberg, Guillermo Payá Vayá, Alberto García Ortiz

Abstract

In NoC-based multi-core systems, the communication subsystem accounts for a significant fraction of the energy consumption. Traditional NoCs guarantee error-free data transfer at the expenses of limiting the hardware optimization possibilities. However, in various applications, such as multimedia processing and machine learning, inaccurate outputs within an acceptable variance is tolerable. Recently, approximate NOCs have been proposed as a viable solution to exploit the trade off between the energy efficiency with data approximation. In this context, we propose two coding techniques. First, a combined memory-less integer-value encoding is proposed to reduce the integer-value deviation in the body flit of the approximate NOCs; and second, a crosstalk avoidance code (CAC) to guarantees the exact transmission of the head flit. Our technique improves the energy consumption of the approximate NOCs remarkably and does not introduces any performance or area penalty. Experimental results using a 65nm commercial technology asses the advantages of the proposed coding approach versus conventional transmission. proposed coding in real scenarios.

Organisation(s)

Institute of Microelectronic Systems

External Organisation(s)

University of Bremen

Type

Conference contribution

Pages

74-81

No. of pages

8

Publication date

07.2019

Publication status

Published

Peer reviewed

Yes

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Software, Hardware and Architecture, Computer Networks and Communications

Sustainable Development Goals

SDG 7 - Affordable and Clean Energy

Electronic version(s)

https://doi.org/10.1109/RECOSOC48741.2019.9034965 (Access: Closed)