Optimizing dynamic mapping techniques for on-line NoC test.

With the aggressive scaling of submicron technology, intermittent faults are becoming one of the limiting factors in achieving a high reliability in Network-on-Chip (NoC). Increasing test frequency is necessary to detect intermittent faults, which in turn interrupts the execution of applications. On the other hand, the main goal of traditional mapping algorithms is to allocate applications to the NoC platform, ignoring about the test requirement. In this paper, we propose a novel testing-aware mapping algorithm (TAMA) for NoC, targeting intermittent faults on the paths between crossbars. In this approach, the idle links are identified and the components between two crossbars are tested when the application is mapped to the platform. The components can be tested if there is enough time from when the application leaves the platform and a new application enters it. The mapping algorithm is tuned to give a higher priority to the tested paths in the next application mapping. This leaves enough time to test the links and the belonging components that have not been tested in the expected time. Experiment results show that the proposed testing-aware mapping algorithm leads to a significant improvement over FF, NN, CoNA, and WeNA.