Testing of Network-on-Chip Architectures

Testing network-on-chip (NoC) architectures is very challenging. Correctness of communication fabric is the first thing to be ensured to guarantee the correct operation of the NoC. The test data for testing the NoC switches and links are to be transported through the NoC itself. Hence, it is essential that the communication infrastructure available in the NoC be used for this purpose as well. The minimization of test delivery times to the NoC elements can be formulated as a graph theoretic problem in which the NoC infrastructure is represented as a graph. The nonpreemptive test scheduling algorithm discussed so far lacks flexibility, in the sense that the minimum manageable unit in test scheduling is the full test application time of a core. A particle corresponds to possible test scheduling order of the cores. The infrastructure test includes testing the routers and links of the NoC.