Making a Case for Partially Connected 3D NoC: NFIC versus TSV

3D Network-on-Chip (3D NoC) enables design of high-performance and energy-efficient manycore computing platforms. Two of the commonly used vertical interconnection technologies are: through silicon via (TSV) and near-field inductive coupling (NFIC). Both TSV- and NFIC-based links introduce additional area overhead. One of the possible ways to reduce the area overhead is to design partially connected 3D NoC with minimal effect on overall performance. The achievable performance of the partially connected 3D NoCs depends on the area, energy, and bandwidth of the vertical links. Moreover, the electromigration-induced failure of TSV is more severe than the misalignment-induced error in NFIC. By considering all these pertinent factors, we demonstrate that it is indeed possible to design a partially connected NFIC-based 3D NoC that performs as good as a fully connected TSV-based counterpart when the data rate is below a certain limit. For higher data rates, the partially connected TSV-based 3D NoC is a viable solution. However, NFIC-based 3D NoC is always more robust than the TSV-based counterpart.