Transient and Permanent Error Co-management Method for Reliable Networks-on-Chip

Abstract

We propose a transient and permanent error co-management method for NoC links to achieve low latency, high throughput and high reliability, while maintaining energy efficiency. To reduce the energy overhead, a configurable error control coding adapts the number of redundant wires to the varying noise conditions, achieving different error detection capability. Infrequently used redundant wires are used as spare wires to replace broken links. Furthermore, a packet rebuilding/restoring algorithm that cooperates with a shortened error control coding method is proposed to support a low-latency splitting transmission. With this co-management method, we manage transient errors and a small number of permanent errors, without using extra spare wires, to reduce the need for adaptive routing. Simulation results show that the proposed method achieves up to 71% packet latency reduction and 20% throughput improvement, compared to previous methods. Case studies show that our method reduces the energy per packet by up to 68% and 48% for low and high permanent error conditions, respectively.