Hardware and software enabled implementation of power profile management instructions in system on chip

Abstract

Aspects of the present disclosure relate to a method and system for hybrid and / or distributed implementation of generation and / or execution of power profile management instructions. An embodiment of the present disclosure provides a hardware element of a SoC / NoC that can be configured to generate and / or execute power profile management instructions using a hybrid combination of software and hardware, wherein the hardware element can be run in parallel with other hardware elements of the SoC / NoC to generate and execute power profile management instructions for different segments or regions of the SoC / NoC for efficient and safe working thereof.

Description

BACKGROUND[0001]Technical Field[0002]Methods and example implementations described herein are directed to an interconnect system on chip architecture, and more specifically, to implementation of a system and method for execution of power profile management instructions for a Network on Chip (NoC) and / or a System on Chip (SoC).[0003]Related Art[0004]The number of components on a chip is rapidly growing due to increasing levels of integration, system complexity and shrinking transistor geometry. Complex System-on-Chips (SoCs) may involve a variety of components e.g., processor cores, DSPs, hardware accelerators, memory and I / O, while Chip Multi-Processors (CMPs) may involve a large number of homogenous processor cores, memory and I / O subsystems. In both SoC and CMP systems, the on-chip interconnect plays a role in providing high-performance communication between the various components. Due to scalability limitations of traditional buses and crossbar based interconnects, Network-on-Chi...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0027]Aspects of the present disclosure relate to a method and system for hybrid and / or distributed implementation of generation and / or execution of power profile management instructions. An embodiment of the present disclosure provides a hardware element of a SoC / NoC that can be configured to generate and / or execute power profile management instructions using a hybrid combination of software and hardware, wherein the hardware element can be run in parallel with other hardware elements of the SoC to generate and execute power profile management instructions for different segments or regions of the SoC / NoC for efficient and safe working thereof.

[0028]Aspects of the present disclosure relate to a mixed hardware and software mechanism, wherein different partitions / regions (each region having one or more hardware elements) of a SoC can be switched from one state to another, and wherein the one or more hardware elements of one or more partitions / regions can have different power and frequency domains. In an aspect, the switching can be enabled to take place in a controlled manner, wherein the switching between regions and operations relating to such switching can be performed safely.

[0036]In an example implementation, one or more hardware elements of a SoC or NoC can be configured to operate in parallel for switching power profiles of one or more hardware elements of different segments or partitions / regions, wherein parallel execution of power profile management sequences by one or more proposed hardware elements (also referred to as controllers for power profile management / switching operations) provides better speed and independent operation of hardware elements of different partitions / regions of a SoC or NoC.

Problems solved by technology

The number of components on a chip is rapidly growing due to increasing levels of integration, system complexity and shrinking transistor geometry.

In heterogeneous mesh topology in which one or more routers or one or more links are absent, dimension order routing may not be feasible between certain source and destination nodes, and alternative paths may have to be taken.

This form of routing may be complex to analyze and implement.

Based upon the traffic between various end points, and the routes and physical networks that are used for various messages, different physical channels of the NoC interconnect may experience different levels of load and congestion.

Unfortunately, channel widths cannot be arbitrarily large due to physical hardware design restrictions, such as timing or wiring congestion.

There may be a limit on the maximum channel width, thereby putting a limit on the maximum bandwidth of any single NoC channel.

Additionally, wider physical channels may not help in achieving higher bandwidth if messages are short.

Due to these limitations on the maximum NoC channel width, a channel may not have enough bandwidth in spite of balancing the routes.

With the number of on-chip components growing, and different heterogeneous subsystems placed on chip having different frequency and voltage requirements, efficient and low overhead power management has become more difficult.

The problem of power / voltage state switching further complicates as existing heterogeneous resources and subsystems typically have their own power management (PM) protocol, generally developed on an adhoc basis, and therefore lack any standard signaling mechanism.

Some of the known prior art systems for power management are typically software implemented with limited configurability.

Existing solutions for power profile management are either hardware based or software based, which have their known disadvantages, wherein hardware based implementations are inflexible in terms of their ability to be configured for new power / voltage states / profiles / modes, and similarly, software based implementations for power profile management are expensive in terms of execution time for performing power / voltage state / profile / mode switching.

None of the existing solutions therefore provide generation and execution of power profile management instructions based a hybrid combination of hardware and software for efficient and safe working of SoC / NoC when their hardware elements switch from one power profile to another power profile.

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