Design of On-chip and Off-chip Interfaces for a GALS NoC Architecture

Abstract

In this paper, we propose the design of on-chip and off-chip interfaces adapted to a globally asynchronous locally synchronous (GALS) network-on-chip (NoC) architecture. The proposed on-chip interface not only handles the resynchronization between the synchronous and asynchronous NoC domains, but also implements NoC communication priorities. This design is based on existing multi-clock synchronization fifos based on Gray code, and is adapted to standard implementation tools. Concerning Off-chip communications, a new concept of mixed synchronous/asynchronous dual mode NoC port is proposed as an efficient off-chip NoC interface for NoC-based open-platform prototyping. These interfaces have been successfully implemented in a 0.13mum CMOS technology