Tutorials
NOCS 2012
Switch design: A unified view of microarchitecture and circuits
Presenter:
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•Giorgos Dimitrakopoulos, Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, Democritus University of Thrace (DUTH), Kimmeria Campus, Xanthi, Greece, dimitrak@ee.duth.gr
Abstract:
Large systems-on-chip (SoCs) and chip multiprocessors (CMPs), incorporating tens to hundreds of cores, create a
significant integration challenge. Interconnecting a huge amount of architectural modules in an efficient manner, calls for scalable
solutions that would offer both high throughput and low-latency communication. The switches are the basic building blocks of such interconnection networks and their design critically affects the performance of the whole system. The goal of this 3hour tutorial is to provide a unified overview of the switch architecture, the corresponding design opportunities and challenges, and existing solutions to overcome these challenges. The material is presented in a step-by-step manner beginning from the basic design principles including also advanced design techniques that cover all switch design space: pipeline organization, flow control, routing logic, buffers, allocators’ structure and algorithms. The tutorial concludes with the implementation aspect of the presented micro-architectures and compares them under a common framework.
Presenter’s biography:
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•Giorgos Dimitrakopoulos received the Dipl. Ing. in Computer Engineering from Computer Engineering and Informatics Dept. of the University of Patras in 2001. In 2003 he completed his MSc in “Integrated Hardware-Software Systems” and in 2007 he earned his PhD from the same department. For the next 2 years he worked as a Postdoctoral fellow at the Computer architecture and VLSI Systems Lab of the Institute of Computer Science (ICS) of the Foundation for Research and Technology – Hellas (FORTH). His main research focus was the design of efficient schedulers for on and off-chip interconnection networks. During that period he worked also as a contract Assistant Professor to the Computer Science Department of the University of Crete teaching basic and advanced digital systems design-related courses. At the end of 2009 and until December 2011 he was appointed as a Lecturer to the Informatics and Communication Engineering Department, of the University of West Macedonia, Kozani, Greece. He taught courses related to electronics and digital circuits design and led a small research group of students investigating low cost on-chip interconnection networks architectures. Since January 2012, he is a Lecturer of Digital Integrated Circuits in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department of the Democritus University of Thrace (DUTH), Xanthi, Greece. His research interests lie in the broad areas of digital integrated circuits and computer architecture, and more specifically, he is interested in the design of on-chip interconnection networks for both ASIC and FPGA fabrics, in ultra low power digital design, as well as in the definition of new architectures for high-peformance graphics accelerators. In these areas he has published more than 30 papers in prestigious internationals journals, conferences and book chapters. He regularly serves as a reviewer for various IEEE journals and conferences, and as a member of the technical program committee in recent INA-OCMC and NoCArch workshops as well as ICECS, FPL and DATE conferences