Hybrid Fault Detection for Adaptive NoC

This letter presents a hybrid approach to efficiently locating data packet errors in an adaptive network-on-chips (NoC). We propose to combine offline and online concepts based on a distributed and factorized online error detection module that will enable us to perform an efficient analysis of partial and localized area networks. This combination allows for an accurate localization of fault sources (97.79% fault coverage) by using offline detection performed at suitable moments that are defined by detecting new run-time fault occurrences through online detection. The offline error detection performed during system operation is applied in one of the reconfigurable regions maintaining the run-time NoC communications. We describe the mechanisms for efficiently associating offline and online error detection, and we evaluate performance overheads in the case of permanent data packet errors. Our approach allows to maintain a high reliability impact and NoC throughput while reducing the data packet latency.