A Fault-Tolerant Structure for Nano-Power Communication Based on the Multidimensional Crossbar Switch Network

Abstract

In order to realize fault tolerance and further reduce the transmission delay, a fault-tolerant structure design method for nano-power communication based on a multidimensional crossbar switch network is proposed. The TSV router is designed as a double crossbar structure, namely the master crossbar (MasterCrossbar) and the slave crossbar (SlaveCrossbar). Each input port of the TSV router is divided into two subports. The port connected to the master crossbar has no input buffer, and the port connected to the slave crossbar has an input buffer. Master crossbar is the first choice for data transmission, and slave crossbar is selected when it is busy to reduce the transmission delay of data packets and reduce power consumption. Dual crossbar switches can also realize the fault tolerance of crossbar switches. The experimental results show that the author's fault-tolerant scheme, without incorporating the double crossbar switch, still has a much smaller transmission delay than the reference because the author realizes fault tolerance for defective TSVs by adding bidirectional TSVs to replace faulty TSVs. Therefore, when there is a TSV failure, the reference transmission delay increases with the number of failures, but the author's design allows packets to be transmitted in the network without being affected; the author's bidirectional TSV fault-tolerant design is combined with the double crossbar design. After that, the transmission delay is smaller than the original, and the maximum transmission delay is about 40% faster than the reference. The authors' design is superior and improves the reliability of the 3DNoC system.