Report on power, thermal and reliability prediction for 3D Networks-on-Chip

By combining Three Dimensional Integrated Circuits with the Network-on-Chip infrastructure to obtain 3D Networks-on-Chip (3D-NoCs), the new on-chip communication paradigm brings several advantages on lower power, smaller footprint and lower latency. However, thermal dissipation is one of the most critical challenges for 3D-ICs where the heat cannot easily transfer through several layers of silicon. Consequently, the high-temperature area also confronts the reliability threat as the Mean Time to Failure (MTTF) decreases exponentially with the operating temperature. Apparently, 3D-NoCs must tackle this fundamental problem in order to be widely used. Therefore, in this work, we investigate the thermal distribution and reliability prediction of 3D-NoCs. We first present a new method to help simulate the temperature (both steady and transient) using traffics value from realistic and synthetic benchmarks and the power consumption from standard VLSI design flow. Then, based on the proposed method, we further predict the relative reliability between different parts of the network. Experimental results show that the method has an extremely fast execution time in comparison to the acceleration lifetime test. Furthermore, we compare the thermal behavior and reliability between Monolithic design and TSV-based TSV. We also explorer the ability to implement the thermal via a mechanism to help reduce the operating temperature.