JOURNAL OF COMPUTING, VOLUME 4, ISSUE 4, APRIL 2012, ISSN 2151-9617 https://sites.google.com/site/journalofcomputing WWW.JOURNALOFCOMPUTING.

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Bandwidth Reservation in MPLS Network-on-Chip

Mohammad Reza Nouri Rad
Department of Computer Engineering Islamic Azad University KhorramAbad Branch, Iran

Reza Kourdy
Department of Computer Engineering Islamic Azad University KhorramAbad Branch, Iran

AbstractThrough MPLS-TE (Traffics Engineering) functions such as network resources optimization, strict Quality of Service, voice data delivery, and fast recovery on link or node failures can ensured. We compare the performance of heterogeneous Network on Chip (NoC) architectures in the sense of on chip network design methodology, with IP and MPLS bandwidth reservation. We also carry out the high-level simulation of on chip network using NS-2 to verify the analytical analysis. Keywords- Network-on-Chip, MultiProtocol Label Switching, Quality-of-Service , bandwidth reservation.

traditional Internet Protocol (IP) routing and switching technologies because it provides end-to-end Quality of Service (QoS), guarantees Traffic Engineering, and support Virtual Private Networks (VPNs). However, MPLS must use path restoration schemes to guarantee the delivery of packets through a network [7]. The Resource Reservation Setup Protocol (RSVP) in MPLS-NoC shown in Fig. 1.

INTRODUCTION

Systems-on-chip (SoCs) for multimedia or telecommunication applications will contain a large number of processing elements (PEs) such as a DSP processor, RISC CPU, embedded RAM, graphics engine, etc. As a result, there is a need for high-throughput communications links between these blocks. There exist many bus based SoCs which are widely used in industry such as AMBA [1], IBM Core-Connect [2], Pi-Bus [3], etc. During the last years, Networks-on-Chip (NoCs) have become a true alternative for the design of complex integrated Systems-on-Chip (SoC). Much effort has been spent for research on functionalities, mechanisms, and Quality-of-Service (QoS) features in NoCs [4]. We can view an NoC system platform as a very complex and multiprotocol network. As such, providing application-wide, endto-end quality-of-service (QoS) is crucial for optimum system performance. System-wide performance constraints require predictability of inter-block communication and QoS guarantees for the end-to-end communication. QoS is characterized by diverse parameters, such as reliability, delay, jitter, bandwidth, packet loss, and throughput [5]. For this purpose, there are recovery mechanisms for MPLS-based protection label switching path (LSP), which are protection switching and rerouting models. MultiProtocol Label Switching (MPLS) is an alternative to integrate the traditional Internet Protocol (IP) routing and switching technologies because it provides end-to-end Quality of Service (QoS), guarantees Traffic Engineering, and support Virtual Private Networks (VPNs). However, MPLS must use path restoration schemes to guarantee the delivery of packets through a network.[6] Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) is an alternative to integrate the

Fig. 1. Resource Reservation Setup Protocol in MPLS-NoC.

BACKGROUND

2.1 Bandwidth Reservation System designers will require NoC communication platforms which have a certain degree of multi-protocol support such as MPLS. Most of the existing NoC architectures are packet-switched (connectionless) NoCs. They are targeting Best-Effort (BE) traffic. Architectures offering only Best-Effort services dont reserve bandwidth and hence can have better average resource utilization, at the cost of unpredictable or unbounded worst-case behavior [8]. 2.2 Using MPLS For Guarantee QOS in NOCs The Multi Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) technology has emerged as a connection-oriented protocol serving connectionless internet IP networks, and thus it provides the means for traffic engineering. This means that paths are set up for aggregated flows of a certain type between specified end points of the IP traffic. Also, DiffServ can support a

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scalable QoS. The combination of these two approaches leads to a scalable hard QoS on internet IP networks because MPLS creates paths that can be traffic engineered [9]. The MPLS Node Architecture for supporting Quality of services has been shown in Fig. 2.

SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE

Fig. 2. The multilayer integrated QoS control architectural model in MPLS-NoCs.

Another scheme for process the traffic in order to supporting quality of services with Differentiated Services (DiffServ) shown in fig 3.

4.1 MPLS Components and terms This section gives an overview of the terms associated with the MPLS technology. 1) Path Label (Associates a packet to a FEC) FEC(Forward Equivalence Class) : A subset of packets that are all treated the same way by an LSR LSP (Label Switch Path): path that a packet follows for a specific FEC Shim - Header containing a Label Stack Label Stack - Multiple labels containing information on how a packet is forwarded. 2) Routers LSR(Label Switched Router)An MPLS capable router LER(Label Edge Router) 3) Protocol LDP (Label Distribution Protocol), used to distribute Label information between MPLS-aware network devices CR-LDP (constraint-based LDP) contains extensions for LDP to extend its capabilities. This allows extending the information used to setup paths beyond what is available for the routing protocol 4) MNS(MPLS Network Simulator) Mpls-Node PDU(Protocol Data Unit) 4.2 MPLS-NoC Architecture MPLS-NoC Architectures are composed of following components: 5) Label-Edge Router The Label Edge Router (LER) operates at the edge of an MPLS network. It is necessary to include an interface (IF) module to interact with different semi-global SoC/NoC [12]. 6) Label-Switched Router A Label Switch Router (LSR) is the main component of the MPLS network. It sets up a path to other MPLS routers and forwards packets to them. 7) Label-Switched Path(LSP) Within an MPLS domain, a path is set up for a given packet to travel on an FEC. The Label-Switched Path (LSP) is set up prior to data transmission. 8) MPLS-NOC MODELING 4.3 MPLS Operation The function of ingress LER is to put a label in the IP packet and forward it to the next hop in the MPLS network. This label is assigned according to the forwarding equivalence class (FEC) of the packet. In this case the IP packet is encapsulated in an MPLS PDU, with an MPLS shim header included in the packet. The main objectives of MPLS are accomplished using fixed-length labels. These labels included in an MPLS header are assigned considering

Fig. 3. Difserv architecture in MPLS NOCs.

In order to support MPLS real-time traffic, the Service Classifier component has been designed and implemented CBQ (Class Based Queuing), which was implemented on NS, is selected for the Packet Scheduler component.

RELATED WORK

Network-on-Chip Quality-of-Service through MPLS objective is discussed in [10], [11] and just papers that use MPLS in NOCs.

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FECs that determine the route of a datagram. The FECs are a representation of a group of packets that share the same requirements to their transport. These FECs can be used to support QoS operations (e.g. real time applications) [13]. This FEC to label relationship determine the Label Switched Path (LSP) of a datagram, from the ingress point to the egress point of the MPLS network. The LSP or tunnel at both ends of the MPLS network is a concatenation of the LSP segments between each node. In this tunnel the ingress node define the type of traffic and assigns a label. According to this label, the traffic is forwarded through the LSP without further examination. At the end of the tunnel, the egress node removes the label and forwards the traffic to an external network (e.g. an IP network). This type of tunnels allows the implementation of Traffic Engineering (TE) [6].

Fig. 5. Buffer overflow in IP-NoC.

EVALUATIONS

5.1 Simulation Framework In this paper, we have modeled our MPLS-NoC architecture concepts with the widely used network simulator ns-2 [14]. NS-2 has been widely applied in research related to the design and evaluation of computer networks and to evaluate various design options for NoC architectures [15], including the design of routers, communication protocols, etc. 5.2 Hardware Architecture We use heterogeneous topology of Network on Chip that shown in Fig. 4.

But because of traffic engineering (TE) in Mpls-NOCs, each switch or router maintain the information about the flows or provide service guarantees on a per flow basis. (See fig. 6).

Fig. 6. Bandwidth reservation in MPLS-NoC.

As shown in fig. 6, we have three flows that was between node 0 and node 10, as below:
LSP start at time 0.5 flow1 (red) in path 1_3_5_7_9 flow2 (green) in path 1_2_4_6_8_9 LSP start at time 1.0 flow3 (blue) in path 1_3_4_6_5_7_8_9 LSP start at time 1.5

these flows has some delay to start, because of send and receive LDP packet between communication cores, that caused to the bandwidth was reservation in the path. Fig. 4. Hetrogeneous NoC with deferent link bandwidth.

5.3 Communication Load

We reduce the rate as multiply of 1000 to support the simulation time. The data rate of each switch to switch link was heterogeneously and was shown in fig. 4. The traffic between resource (IPs) and the switches was higher than the traffic between switch to switches. As mentioned as above section, in IP-NoC at time 0.5 when flow1 was start the communication load was reaches up to 0.8 Megabit/sec. At time 1.0 and 1.5 the flow2 and flow3 was start respectively, that caused to the communication load between mentioned cores was reduces (see fig. 7).

The black circle was processor elements and the blue circle and was switches that connect to each other. In IP NOCs, the switches has not any information about link bandwidth or buffer consumption in the other switches, this situation caused to buffer overflow and packet drop in switches, see fig. 5.

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Fig. 7. Bandwidth utilization of Flows in IP-NoC.

As shown in fig. 8, the bandwidth of three flows in MPLSNoC was reach up to 0.8 Megabit/sec, and none of them has packet dropped.

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[13] [14] [15]

Fig. 8. Bandwidth utilization of flows in MPLS-NoC.

R. Hofmann and B. Drerup, Next generation CoreConnect processor local bus architecture, in 15th Annual IEEE International ASIC/SOC Conference, Sep. 2002, pp. 221225. C. Roark and F. Jackson, New developments in a PI-Bus specification by the JIAWG and SAE, in Proc. of the IEEE National Aerospace and Electronics Conference, vol. 2, May 1992, pp. 760 766. S. Kubisch, C. Cornelius, R. Hecht, D. Timmermann, Mapping a Pipelined Data Path onto a Network-on-Chip, University of Rostock, Institute of Applied Microelectronics and Computer Engineering, 4-6 July 2007 Industrial Embedded Systems, 2007. M. Harmanci, N. Escudero, Y. Leblebici, and P. Ienne, Quantitative modelling and comparison of communication schemes to guarantee quality-of-service in networks-on-chip, in IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems, vol. 2, May 2005, pp. 1782 1785. M. Minero-Muoz, V. Alarcon-Aquino, Reconfigurable Path Restoration Schemes for MPLS Networks, Infocomp Journal of Computer Science, Vol. 8, No2, June 2009; pp. 29-38. M. MINERO-MUOZ, V. ALARCON-AQUINO, Reconfigurable Path Restoration Schemes for MPLS Networks ,Department of Computing, Electronics, and Mechatronics Communications and Signal Processing Research Group UDLAP - Sta. Catarina Martir, Cholula Puebla MEXICO, April 26, 2009. K. Goossens, J. Dielissen, J. van Meerbergen, P. Poplavko, A. Rdulescu, E. Rijpkema, E. Waterlander, and P. Wielage, Guaranteeing the quality of services in networks on chip, pp. 61 82, 2003. V. Fineberg, C. Chen, and X. Xiao, An end-to-end QoS architecture with the MPLS-based core, in IEEE Workshop on IP Operations and Management, 2002, pp. 2630. M. Kim, D. Kim and G. E. Sobelman, Network-on-Chip Quality-ofService through MultiProtocol Label Switching Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455 USA. M.R.N, R.Kourdy, M.R.Nouri Rad, "Network-on-Chip Quality-ofService through MPLS Reservation Mechanism ", 2010 Second International Conference on Computer Research and Development, Kuala Lumpur, May 2010, pp. 775 778. R. Peterkin and D. Ionescu, Embedded MPLS Architecture, in Proc. of the 19th IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium, Apr. 2005, pp. 170a170a. Black, U. MPLS and Label Switching Networks. Prentice Hall PTR, Upper Saddle River, NJ, USA, 2002. www.isi.edu/nsnam/ns R. Lemaire, F. Clermidy, Y. Durand, D. Lattard, and A. Jerraya, Performance Evaluation of a NoC-Based Design for MC-CDMA Telecommunications Using NS-2, in The 16th IEEE International Workshop on Rapid System Prototyping, Jun. 2005, pp. 2430.

This means the communication load of the cores was supported in MPLS-NoC, but in IP-NoC was not supported.

CONCLUSION AND FUTUREWORK

This paper presents some of the results obtained by using constraint base routing in MPLS-NoC with relative and fixed bandwidth allocation to Multi Protocol Label Switching Network on Cip. We have to present a novel MPLS-NoC that supports the communication load of the cores.

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REFERENCES
J. Park, I. Kim, S. Kim, S. Park, B. Koo, K. Shin, K. Seo, and J. Cha, MPEG-4 video codec on an ARM core and AMBA, in Proc. Of Workshop and Exhibition on MPEG-4, Jun. 2001, pp. 9598.

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Reza Kourdy received his B.Sc. Degree in Computer Engineering and his M.Sc. Degree in Computer Architecture both from Azad University of Arak, Iran, in 2002 and 2007, respectively. His research interests include Network-On-Chip Architecture and Fault-tolerance.

Mohammad Reza Nouri Rad received his B.Sc. Degree in Computer Engineering Software from Azad University of Najafabad, Iran, in 2001, and his M.Sc. Degree in Computer Software from Azad University of Arak, Iran, in 2010. His research interests include Network-OnChip Architecture and Network Security. He is Program Committee of following conferences : WICT 2011 CSNT 2011 CICN 2011 SocProS 2011 CSNT 2012 CICN 2012 BIC-TA 2012