ORION3.0: A Comprehensive NoC Router Estimation Tool

Networks-on-Chip (NoCs) are increasingly used in many-core architectures. ORION2.0 (see Ref [1] Kahng etal., Proc. DATE, 2009, pp. 423-428) is a widely adopted NoC power and area estimation tool, but its estimation models can have large errors (up to 185%) versus actual implementations. We present ORION3.0, an open-source tool whose parametric and nonparametric modeling methodologies fundamentally differ from ORION2.0 logic template-based approaches in that the estimation models are derived from actual physical implementation data. When compared with actual implementations, ORION3.0 models achieve average estimation errors of no more than 9.3% across microarchitecture, implementation, and operational parameters as well as multiple router RTL generators. A comprehensive suite of these methodologies has been implemented in ORION3.0 (see Ref [2] Available online: http://vlsicad.ucsd.edu/ORION3/.