<p>There is a seemingly endless miniaturization of electronic components, which has enabled designers to build sophisticated computing structureson silicon chips. Consequently, electronic systems are continuously improving with new and more advanced functionalities. Design complexity ofthese Systems on Chip (SoC) is reduced by the use of pre-designed cores. However, several problems related to the interconnection of coresremain. Network on Chip (NoC) is a new SoC design paradigm, which targets the interconnect problems using classical network concepts. Still,SoC cores show large variance in size and functionality, whereas several NoC benefits relate to regularity and homogeneity.</p><p>This thesis studies some network aspects which are characteristic to NoC systems. One is the issue of area wastage in NoC due to cores of varioussizes. We elaborate on using oversized regions in regular mesh NoC and identify several new design possibilities. Adverse effects of regions oncommunication are outlined and evaluated by simulation.</p><p>Deadlock freedom is an important region issue, since it affects both the usability and performance of routing algorithms. The concept of faultyblocks, used in deadlock free fault-tolerant routing algorithms has similarities with rectangular regions. We have improved and adopted one suchalgorithm to provide deadlock free routing in NoC with regions. This work also offers a methodology for designing topology agnostic, deadlockfree, highly adaptive application specific routing algorithms. The methodology exploits information about communication among tasks of anapplication. This is used in the analysis of deadlock freedom, such that fewer deadlock preventing routing restrictions are required.</p><p>A comparative study of the two proposed routing algorithms shows that the application specific algorithm gives significantly higher performance.But, the fault-tolerant algorithm may be preferred for systems requiring support for general communication. Several extensions to our work areproposed, for example in areas such as core mapping and efficient routing algorithms. The region concept can be extended for supporting reuse ofa pre-designed NoC as a component in a larger hierarchical NoC.</p>

With the increasing demand of computation capabilities, many-core processors are gain-ing more and more attention. As a communication subsystem many-core processors, Network-on-Chip (NoC) draws a lot of attention in the related research fields. A NoC is used to deliver messages among different cores. For many applications, timeliness is of great importance, especially when the application has hard real-time requirements. Thus, the worst-case end-to-end delays of all the messages passing through a NoC should be concerned. Unfortunately, there is no existing analysis tool that can support multiple NoC architectures as well as provide a user-friendly interface.This thesis focuses on a wormhole switched NoC using different arbitration policies which are Fixed Priority (FP) and Round Robin (RR) respectively. FP based arbitration policy includes distinct and shared priority based arbitration policies. We have developed a timing analysis tool targeting the above NoC designs. The Graphical User Interface (GUI) in the tool can simplify the operation of users. The tool takes characteristics of flow sets as input, and returns results regarding the worst-case end-to-end delay of each flow. These results can be used to assist the design of real-time applications on the corre-sponding platform.A number of experiments have been generated to compare different arbitration mecha-nisms using the developed tool. The evaluation focuses on the effect of different param-eters including the number of flows and the number of virtual-channels in a NoC, and the number of hops of each flow. In the first set of experiment, we focus on the schedulabil-ity ratio achieved by different arbitration policies regarding the number of flows. The sec-ond set of experiments focus on the comparison between NoCs with different number of virtual-channels. In the last set of experiments, we compare different arbitration mecha-nisms with respect to the worst-case end-to-end latencies.

There is a seemingly endless miniaturization of electronic components, which has enabled designers to build sophisticated computing structureson silicon chips. Consequently, electronic systems are continuously improving with new and more advanced functionalities. Design complexity ofthese Systems on Chip (SoC) is reduced by the use of pre-designed cores. However, several problems related to the interconnection of coresremain. Network on Chip (NoC) is a new SoC design paradigm, which targets the interconnect problems using classical network concepts. Still,SoC cores show large variance in size and functionality, whereas several NoC benefits relate to regularity and homogeneity. This thesis studies some network aspects which are characteristic to NoC systems. One is the issue of area wastage in NoC due to cores of varioussizes. We elaborate on using oversized regions in regular mesh NoC and identify several new design possibilities. Adverse effects of regions oncommunication are outlined and evaluated by simulation. Deadlock freedom is an important region issue, since it affects both the usability and performance of routing algorithms. The concept of faultyblocks, used in deadlock free fault-tolerant routing algorithms has similarities with rectangular regions. We have improved and adopted one suchalgorithm to provide deadlock free routing in NoC with regions. This work also offers a methodology for designing topology agnostic, deadlockfree, highly adaptive application specific routing algorithms. The methodology exploits information about communication among tasks of anapplication. This is used in the analysis of deadlock freedom, such that fewer deadlock preventing routing restrictions are required. A comparative study of the two proposed routing algorithms shows that the application specific algorithm gives significantly higher performance.But, the fault-tolerant algorithm may be preferred for systems requiring support for general communication. Several extensions to our work areproposed, for example in areas such as core mapping and efficient routing algorithms. The region concept can be extended for supporting reuse ofa pre-designed NoC as a component in a larger hierarchical NoC.

Les architectures pluri-coeurs sont plus intéressantes pour concevoir des systèmes en temps réel que les systèmes multi-coeurs car il est possible de les maîtriser plus facilement et d’intégrer un plus grand nombre d’applications, potentiellement de différents niveau de criticité. Dans les systèmes temps réel embarqués, ces architectures peuvent être utilisées comme des éléments de traitement au sein d’un réseau fédérateur car ils fournissent un grand nombre d’interfaces Entrées/Sorties telles que les contrôleurs Ethernet et les interfaces de la mémoire DDR-SDRAM. Aussi, il est possible d’y allouer des applications ayant différents niveaux de criticités. Ces applications communiquent entre elles à travers le réseau sur puce (NoC) du pluri coeur et avec des capteurs et des actionneurs via l’interface Ethernet. Afin de garantir les contraintes temps réel de ces applications, les délais de transmission pire cas (WCTT) doivent être calculés pour les flux entre les coeurs ("inter-core") et les flux entre les coeurs et les interfaces entrées/sorties ("core-to-I/O"). Plusieurs réseaux sur puce (NoCs) ciblant les systèmes en temps réel dur ont été conçus en s’appuyant sur des extensions matérielles spécifiques. Cependant, aucune de ces extensions ne sont actuellement disponibles dans les architectures de réseaux sur puce commercialisés, qui se basent sur la commutation wormhole avec la stratégie d’arbitrage par tourniquet. En utilisant cette stratégie de commutation, différents types d’interférences peuvent se produire sur le réseau sur puce entre les flux. De plus, le placement de tâches des applications critiques et non critiques a un impact sur les contentions que peut subir les flux "core-to-I/O". Ces flux "core-to-I/O" parcourent deux réseaux de vitesses différentes: le NoC et Ethernet. Sur le NoC, la taille des paquets autorisés est beaucoup plus petite que la taille des trames Ethernet. Ainsi, lorsque la trame Ethernet est transmise sur le NoC, elle est divisée en plusieurs paquets. La trame sera supprimée de la mémoire tampon de l’interface Ethernet uniquement lorsque la totalité des données aura été transmise. Malheureusement, la congestion du NoC ajoute des délais supplémentaires à la transmission des paquets et la taille de la mémoire tampon de l’interface Ethernet est limitée. En conséquence, ce comportement peut aboutir au rejet des trames Ethernet. L’idée donc est de pouvoir analyser les délais de transmission pire cas sur les NoC et de réduire leurs délais afin d’éviter ce problème de rejet. Dans cette thèse, nous montrons que le pessimisme de méthodes existantes de calcul de WCTT et les stratégies de placements existantes conduisent à rejeter des trames Ethernet en raison d’une congestion interne sur le NoC. Des propriétés des réseaux utilisant la commutation "wormhole" ont été définies et validées afin de mieux prendre en compte les conflits entre les flux. Une stratégie de placement de tâches qui prend en compte les communications avec les I/O a été ensuite proposée. Cette stratégie vise à diminuer les contentions des flux qui proviennent de l’I/O et donc de réduire leurs WCTTs. Les résultats obtenus par la méthode de calcul définie au cours de cette thèse montrent que les valeurs du WCTT des flux peuvent être réduites jusqu’à 50% par rapport aux valeurs de WCTT obtenues par les méthodes de calcul existantes. En outre, les résultats expérimentaux sur des applications avioniques réelles montrent des améliorations significatives des délais de transmission des flux "core-to-I/O", jusqu’à 94%, sans impact significatif sur ceux des flux "intercore". Ces améliorations sont dues à la stratégie d’allocation définie qui place les applications de manière à réduire l’impact des flux non critiques sur les flux critiques. Ces réductions de WCTT des flux "core-to-I/O" évitent le rejet des trames Ethernet. / Many-core architectures are more promising hardware to design real-time systems than multi-core systems as they should enable an easier mastered integration of a higher number of applications, potentially of different level of criticalities. In embedded real-time systems, these architectures will be integrated within backbone Ethernet networks, as they mostly provide Ethernet controllers as Input/Output(I/O) interfaces. Thus, a number of applications of different level of criticalities could be allocated on the Network-on-Chip (NoC) and required to communicate with sensors and actuators. However, the worst-case behavior of NoC for both inter-core and core-to-I/O communications must be established. Several NoCs targeting hard real-time systems, made of specific hardware extensions, have been designed. However, none of these extensions are currently available in commercially available NoC-based many-core architectures, that instead rely on wormhole switching with round-robin arbitration. Using this switching strategy, interference patterns can occur between direct and indirect flows on many-cores. Besides, the mapping over the NoC of both critical and non-critical applications has an impact on the network contention these core-to-I/O communications exhibit. These core-to-I/O flows (coming from the Ethernet interface of the NoC) cross two networks of different speeds: NoC and Ethernet. On the NoC, the size of allowed packets is much smaller than the size of Ethernet frames. Thus, once an Ethernet frame is transmitted over the NoC, it will be divided into many packets. When all the data corresponding to this frame are received by the DDR-SDRAM memory on the NoC, the frame is removed from the buffer of the Ethernet interface. In addition, the congestion on the NoC, due to wormhole switching, can delay these flows. Besides, the buffer in the Ethernet interface has a limited capacity. Then, this behavior may lead to a problem of dropping Ethernet frames. The idea is therefore to analyze the worst case transmission delays on the NoC and reduce the delays of the core-to-I/O flows. In this thesis, we show that the pessimism of the existing Worst-Case Traversal Time (WCTT) computing methods and the existing mapping strategies lead to drop Ethernet frames due to an internal congestion in the NoC. Thus, we demonstrate properties of such NoC-based wormhole networks to reduce the pessimism when modeling flows in contentions. Then, we propose a mapping strategy that minimizes the contention of core-to-I/O flows in order to solve this problem. We show that the WCTT values can be reduced up to 50% compared to current state-of-the-art real-time packet schedulability analysis. These results are due to the modeling of the real impact of the flows in contention in our proposed computing method. Besides, experimental results on real avionics applications show significant improvements of core-to-I/O flows transmission delays, up to 94%, without significantly impacting transmission delays of core-to-core flows. These improvements are due to our mapping strategy that allocates the applications in such a way to reduce the impact of non-critical flows on critical flows. These reductions on the WCTT of the core-to-I/O flows avoid the drop of Ethernet frames.