CA Based Design of Fault Detection Unit for Hierarchical Directories in Scalable CMPs

Abstract

In a Chip Multiprocessors (CMPs) with large number of cores, directory size increases linearly with number of sharers. To over-come the shortcomings of flat directory structures, hierarchical directory structures are used. An insignificant fault in the sharer set representation of such a directory may introduce major inconsistency throughout the system. Therefore, the current work targets detection of any faulty recording in the sharer set representation of a hierarchical directory. The solution is developed around a special class of Cellular Automata (CA) with single length cycle attractors. The CA based design ensures low cost hardware implementation as well as high-speed operation.