A traffic-aware memory-cube network using bypassing

Three-dimensional stack memory which provides both high-bandwidth access and large capacity is a promising technology for next-generation computer systems. While a large number of memory cubes increase the aggregate memory capacity, the communication latency and power consumption increase significantly owing to its low-radix large-diameter packet network. In this context, we propose a memory-cube network called Diagonal Memory Network (DMN). A diagonal network topology, its floor layout, and its lightweight router were designed for low-latency and low-voltage memory-read communication. DMN routing efficiently avoids deadlocks of packets, although it allows each packet transmitted to a processor to use both bypassing and original datapaths. Our evaluation results show that the DMN router decreases the use of hardware resources by more than 31% compared with a conventional virtual channel router. The DMN router reduces energy consumption by 13% and 67% to transit a packet along with the original datapath and bypassing datapath, respectively. Furthermore, using flit-level discrete event simulation, a DMN topology achieves high throughput and latency that is lower than that of existing network topologies using conventional packet routers.