A Comparative Analysis of Asynchronous and Synchronous NoC for Dynamic Traffic Handling using trace-inspired Synthetic Multimedia Data

Abstract

The paper investigates the feasibility of asynchronous Network-on-Chip (NoC) with wormhole switching in supporting traffic with variable data rates. A new approach to generate synthetic traffic close to realistic multimedia data traffic is also presented for the first time. This multimedia data stream traffic is utilized to evaluate the dynamic traffic handling capability of a generic synchronous NoC switch and asynchronous NoC switch architectures. Multimedia data streams are characterized as variable bit rate data streams where the amount of data being transmitted changes dynamically, depicting the heterogeneous timing of modern System-onChip (SoC). The Cadence Spectre Analog/Mixed Signal (AMS) Designer tool is used as a verification platform for the ease of simulation and to draw a fair comparison between the two architectures. The simulation platform is augmented with a real-time multimedia data stream for analysis. The simulation results show that the asynchronous design, activated only upon receiving data, outperforms the clock-triggered synchronous design in variable data-driven scenarios. © 2024 IEEE.