In this paper, a low energy yet reliable communication scheme for network-on-chip is suggested. To reduce the communication energy consumption, we invoke low-swing signals for transmitting data, as well as data encoding techniques, for minimizing both self and coupling switching capacitance activity factors. To maintain the communication reliability of communication at low-voltage swing, an error control coding (ECC) technique is exploited. The decision about end-to-end or hop-to-hop ECC schemes and the proper number of detectable errors are determined through high-level mathematical analysis on the energy and reliability characteristics of the techniques. Based on the analysis, the extended single error correction double-error detecting end-to-end coding technique with three bits of error detection is used in the network layer. For minimization of the self and coupling switching capacitance activity factors, the odd, even, full invert scheme is employed in the data link layer. This coding has an inherent error detection probability for the flits, which is exploited in the suggested technique. The efficiency of the scheme is studied by using both synthetic and real traffic scenarios. The study reveals savings of up to 43% and 58%, for power dissipation and energy consumption, respectively, without any significant performance degradation and overhead in the network interface.

As technology shrinks, the power dissipated by the links of a network-on-chip (NoC) starts to compete with the power dissipated by the other elements of the communication subsystem, namely, the routers and the network interfaces (NIs). In this paper, we present a set of data encoding schemes aimed at reducing the power dissipated by the links of an NoC. The proposed schemes are general and transparent with respect to the underlying NoC fabric (i.e., their application does not require any modification of the routers and link architecture). Experiments carried out on both synthetic and real traffic scenarios show the effectiveness of the proposed schemes, which allow to save up to 51% of power dissipation and 14% of energy consumption without any significant performance degradation and with less than 15% area overhead in the NI.