Machine Learning Based Energy-Efficient Design Approach for Interconnects in Circuits and Systems

• Main Authors: Hung Khac Le, SoYoung Kim
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2021-01-01
• Series: Applied Sciences
• Subjects: artificial neural network (ANN); energy-efficient; off-chip interconnect; eye diagram; transmitter; printed circuit board (PCB)
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/11/3/915

In this paper, we propose an efficient design methodology for energy-efficient off-chip interconnect. This approach leverages an artificial neural network (ANN) as a surrogate model that significantly improves design efficiency in the frequency-domain. This model utilizes design specifications as the constraint functions to guarantee the satisfaction of design requirements. Additionally, a specified objective function to select low-loss and low-noise structure is employed to determine the optimal case from a large design space. The proposed design flow can find the optimum design that gives maximum eye height (EH) with the largest allowable transmitter supply voltage (<inline-formula><math display="inline"><semantics><msub><mi>V</mi><mrow><mi>T</mi><mi>X</mi></mrow></msub></semantics></math></inline-formula>) reduction for minimum power consumption. The proposed approach is applied to the microstrip line and stripline structures with single-ended and differential signals for general applicability. For the microstrip line, the proposed methodology performs at a performance speed with 42.7 and 0.5 s per structure for the data generation and optimization process, respectively. In addition, the optimal microstrip line design achieves a 25% <inline-formula><math display="inline"><semantics><msub><mi>V</mi><mrow><mi>T</mi><mi>X</mi></mrow></msub></semantics></math></inline-formula> reduction. In stripline structures, it takes 31.9 s for the data generation and 0.6 s for the optimization process per structure when the power efficiency reaches a maximum 30.7% peak to peak <inline-formula><math display="inline"><semantics><msub><mi>V</mi><mrow><mi>T</mi><mi>X</mi></mrow></msub></semantics></math></inline-formula> decrease.