Exjobbspresentation: A Lightweight Router Architecture for Scalable Mesh-Based Inter-Chiplet Communication

Handledare: Kristoffer Westring och Victor Åberg 

Examinatorerna: Pietro Andreani

Chiplet-based design is a promising candidate for facilitating improved system scalability and design flexibility. By distributing a system across several smaller chips, chiplet-based design allows standardized components to be combined in a more flexible way, while allowing for hardware reuse. However, this increases the need for efficient data movement between chiplets. Scalable inter-chiplet communication fabrics provide a flexible framework for connecting these components and addressing data-movement bottlenecks in chiplet-oriented systems.

This thesis presents a scalable router for a mesh-based chiplet communication system. The router supports packet-based communication between chiplets, with basic routing, virtual-channel support, pipelined forwarding, and flow control for reliable packet movement when multiple packets compete for shared link resources.

Our router solution comes with a small footprint, making it suitable for integration in smaller chiplets. Verification has been performed on a 3×3 array to verify correct package forwarding under varying loading conditions.