MBus: A System Integration Bus for the Modular Micro-Scale Computing Class
Pat Pannuto, Yoonmyung Lee, Ye-Sheng Kuo, zhiyoong foo, Benjamin Kempke, Gyouho Kim, Ronald G. Dreslinski, David Blaauw, Prabal Dutta

Citation
Pat Pannuto, Yoonmyung Lee, Ye-Sheng Kuo, zhiyoong foo, Benjamin Kempke, Gyouho Kim, Ronald G. Dreslinski, David Blaauw, Prabal Dutta. "MBus: A System Integration Bus for the Modular Micro-Scale Computing Class". submitted to Special Issue of IEEE Micro: Micro's Top Picks from Computer Architecture Conferences, May 2016.

Abstract
I/O has become the limiting factor in scaling down size and power toward the goal of invisible computing. Achieving this goal will require composing optimized and specialized - yet reusable - components with an interconnect that permits tiny, ultra-low power systems. In contrast to today's interconnects which are limited by power-hungry pull-ups or high-overhead chip-select lines, our approach provides a superset of common bus features but at lower power, with fixed area and pin count, using fully synthesizable logic, and with surprisingly low protocol overhead. We present MBus, a new 4-pin, 22.6 pJ/bit/chip chip-to-chip interconnect made of two "shoot-through" rings. MBus facilitates ultra-low power system operation by implementing automatic power-gating of each chip in the system, easing the integration of active, inactive, and activating circuits. In addition, we introduce a new bus primitive: power oblivious communication, which guarantees message reception regardless of the recipient's power state when a message is sent. This disentangles power management from communication, greatly simplifying the creation of viable, modular, and heterogeneous systems that operate on the order of nanowatts.

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Citation formats

• HTML

  Pat Pannuto, Yoonmyung Lee, Ye-Sheng Kuo, zhiyoong foo,
  Benjamin Kempke, Gyouho Kim, Ronald G. Dreslinski, David
  Blaauw, Prabal Dutta. <a
  href="http://www.terraswarm.org/pubs/749.html"
  >MBus: A System Integration Bus for the Modular
  Micro-Scale Computing Class</a>, <i>submitted to
  Special Issue of IEEE Micro: Micro's Top Picks from Computer
  Architecture Conferences</i>, May 2016.

• Plain text

  Pat Pannuto, Yoonmyung Lee, Ye-Sheng Kuo, zhiyoong foo,
  Benjamin Kempke, Gyouho Kim, Ronald G. Dreslinski, David
  Blaauw, Prabal Dutta. "MBus: A System Integration Bus
  for the Modular Micro-Scale Computing Class".
  <i>submitted to Special Issue of IEEE Micro: Micro's
  Top Picks from Computer Architecture Conferences</i>,
  May 2016.

• BibTeX

  @article{PannutoLeeKuofooKempkeKimDreslinskiBlaauwDutta16_MBusSystemIntegrationBusForModularMicroScaleComputing,
      author = {Pat Pannuto and Yoonmyung Lee and Ye-Sheng Kuo and
                zhiyoong foo and Benjamin Kempke and Gyouho Kim
                and Ronald G. Dreslinski and David Blaauw and
                Prabal Dutta},
      title = {MBus: A System Integration Bus for the Modular
                Micro-Scale Computing Class},
      journal = {submitted to Special Issue of IEEE Micro: Micro's
                Top Picks from Computer Architecture Conferences},
      month = {May},
      year = {2016},
      abstract = {I/O has become the limiting factor in scaling down
                size and power toward the goal of invisible
                computing. Achieving this goal will require
                composing optimized and specialized - yet reusable
                - components with an interconnect that permits
                tiny, ultra-low power systems. In contrast to
                today's interconnects which are limited by
                power-hungry pull-ups or high-overhead chip-select
                lines, our approach provides a superset of common
                bus features but at lower power, with fixed area
                and pin count, using fully synthesizable logic,
                and with surprisingly low protocol overhead. We
                present MBus, a new 4-pin, 22.6 pJ/bit/chip
                chip-to-chip interconnect made of two
                "shoot-through" rings. MBus facilitates ultra-low
                power system operation by implementing automatic
                power-gating of each chip in the system, easing
                the integration of active, inactive, and
                activating circuits. In addition, we introduce a
                new bus primitive: power oblivious communication,
                which guarantees message reception regardless of
                the recipient's power state when a message is
                sent. This disentangles power management from
                communication, greatly simplifying the creation of
                viable, modular, and heterogeneous systems that
                operate on the order of nanowatts.},
      URL = {http://terraswarm.org/pubs/749.html}
  }
  

Posted by Elizabeth Coyne on 1 Mar 2016.