A Task Migration Technique for Temperature Control in 3D NoCs

Combination of 3D IC technology and network on chip (NoC) is an effective solution to increase system scalability and also alleviate the interconnect problem in large scale integrated circuits. However, due to the increased power density in 3D NoC systems and the destructive impact of high temperatures on chip reliability, applying thermal management solutions becomes crucial in such circuits. In this paper, we propose a runtime distributed migration algorithm based on game theory to balance the heat dissipation among processing elements (PEs) in a 3D NoC chip multiprocessor (CMP). The objective of this algorithm is to minimize the 3D NoC system’s peak temperature, as well as the overhead imposed on chip performance during migration. Due to the high thermal correlation between adjacent PEs in the same stack in 3D NoCs, we model this multi-objective problem as a cooperative game. Simulation results indicate up to 23% and 27% decrease in peak temperature, for the benchmarks that have the highest communication rate and largest number of tasks, respectively. This comes at the price of slight migration overhead in terms of power-delay product (PDP). Keywords-3D NoC; task migration; game theory