PANE: Pluggable Asynchronous Network-on-Chip Simulator.

Communication between different IP cores in MPSoCs and HMPs often results in clock domain crossing. Asynchronous network on chip (NoC) support communication in such heterogeneous set-ups. While there are a large number of tools to model NoCs for synchronous systems, there is very limited tool support to model communication for multi-clock domain NoCs and analyse them. In this article, we propose the Pluggable Asynchronous NEtwork on Chip (PANE) simulator, which allows system-level simulation of asynchronous network on chip (NoC). PANE allows design space exploration of synchronous, asynchronous, and mixed synchronous-asynchronous(heterogeneous) NoC for various system-level NoC parameters such as packet latencies, throughput, network saturation point and power analysis. PANE supports a large range of NoC configurations—routing algorithms, topologies, network sizes, and so on—for both synthetic and real traffic patterns. We demonstrate the application of PANE by using synchronous routers, asynchronous routers, and a mix of asynchronous and synchronous routers. One of the key advantages of PANE is that it allows a seamless transition from synchronous to asynchronous NoC simulators while keeping pace with the developments in synchronous NoC tools as they can be integrated with PANE.