Mei Yang, University of Nevada-Las Vegas Energy-Efficient and Reconfigurable Network-on-Chips for IP Integration in Complex SoC Systems
Intellectual Merit: This project focuses on investigating energy-efficient and reconfigurable Network-on-Chips (NoCs) to address the major challenges faced by Intellectual Property (IP) integration in complex System-on-Chip (SoC) systems, including energy efficiency, reconfigurability, scalability, and signal integrity. The objectives of the proposed work include: . Investigate reconfigurable Recursive Diagonal Torus (RDT)-based NoC architectures; . Investigate multi-path routing scheme; . Investigate the prioritized wormhole switching technique; and . Develop prototype systems to test all the proposed solutions and tackle the system integration issues in building the prototypes. The intellectual merit of the proposed research includes: (1) The study of reconfigurable NoC architectures will help to understand some fundamental issues related to the NoC paradigm; (2) The proposed routing scheme is the first attempt in addressing signal integrity problem at the network level, which will promote the research in developing cross-layer optimized communication protocols for NoCs; and (3) Challenging implementation issues related to NoCs are studied by the designs of the prototype systems.
Broader Impacts: The broader impacts of the proposed research include: (1) The proposed work will open a new avenue for designing (in architecture selection and communication model) and synthesizing future computation-intensive SoC systems; (2) The project will improve the quality of the graduate and undergraduate education in the ECE department at UNLV through project participation and curriculum development; (3) The community outreach program shall have profound impacts on high school students, especially those students from the minority and the underrepresented groups, to choose a rewarding career in science and engineering; and (4) UNLV's developing R&D capabilities in the emerging area of SoCs will significantly escalate and diversify Nevada economy by helping establish essential science and technology partnerships, allowing fast technology transfer from the university research to industry, and attracting and keeping the talented students to study and be employed in the state.
