Wireless versus Wired Network-on-Chip to Enable the Multi-Tenant Multi-FPGAs in Cloud

The new era of computing is not CPU-centric but enriched with all the heterogeneous computing resources including the reconfigurable fabric. In multi-FPGA architecture, either deployed within a data center or as a standalone model, inter-FPGA communication is crucial. Network-on-chip exhibits a promising performance for the integration of one FPGA. A sustainable communication architecture requires stable performance as the number of applications or users grows. Wireless network-on-chip has the potential to be that communication architecture, as it boasts the same performance capability as wired solutions in addition to its multicast capacities. We conducted an exploratory study to investigate different performance parameters using the Noxim simulator. The preliminary results showed better average delay and network throughput for wireless network-on-chip as compared to the wired counterpart.