Comparative reliability analysis between AMBA and network-on-chip: An MPEG-2 case study

We present comparative reliability analysis between shared-bus AMBA and network-on-chip (NoC) in the presence of single-event upsets (SEUs) using MPEG-2 video decoder as a case study. Employing SystemC-based cycle-accurate fault simulations, we investigate how the decoder reliability is affected when SEUs are injected into the computation cores and communication interconnects of the decoder. We show that for a given soft error rate, AMBA-based decoder experiences higher SEUs during computation due to higher execution time. On the other hand, NoC-based decoder experiences higher SEUs during inter-core communication due to higher channel latency and resource usage in the interconnects. Furthermore, we evaluate the impact of total SEUs at application-level for NoC- and AMBA-based decoders.