Multi-granularity thermal evaluation of 3D MPSoC architectures

Three-dimensional (3D) integrated circuits (IC) are emerging as a viable solution to enhance the performance of Multi-processor System-On-Chip (MPSoC). The use of highspeed hardware and the increased density of 3D architectures present novel challenges concerning thermal dissipation and power management. Most approaches at power and thermal modeling use either static analytical models or slow low-level analog simulations. In this paper, we propose a novel thermal modeling methodology for evaluation of 3D MPSoCs. The integration of this methodology in a virtual platform enables effcient dynamic thermal evaluation of a chip. We present initial results for an architecture based on a 3D Network-On-Chip (NoC) interconnecting 2D processing elements (PE). Our methodology is based on the finite difference method: we perform an initial static characterization, after which high-speed dynamic simulation is possible.