Towards Reliable Systems: A Scalable Approach to AXI4 Transaction Monitoring

Fuente: arXiv
Salvato in:
Dettagli Bibliografici
Autori principali: Liang, Chaoqun, Benz, Thomas, Ottaviano, Alessandro, Garofalo, Angelo, Benini, Luca, Rossi, Davide
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
Soggetti:
Accesso online:
Tags: Aggiungi Tag
Nessun Tag, puoi essere il primo ad aggiungerne!!
_version_ 1866910804485341184
author Liang, Chaoqun
Benz, Thomas
Ottaviano, Alessandro
Garofalo, Angelo
Benini, Luca
Rossi, Davide
author_facet Liang, Chaoqun
Benz, Thomas
Ottaviano, Alessandro
Garofalo, Angelo
Benini, Luca
Rossi, Davide
contents In safety-critical SoC applications such as automotive and aerospace, reliable transaction monitoring is crucial for maintaining system integrity. This paper introduces a drop-in Transaction Monitoring Unit (TMU) for AXI4 subordinate endpoints that detects transaction failures including protocol violations or timeouts and triggers recovery by resetting the affected subordinates. Two TMU variants address different constraints: a Tiny-Counter solution for tightly area-constrained systems and a Full-Counter solution for critical subordinates in mixed-criticality SoCs. The Tiny-Counter employs a single counter per outstanding transaction, while the Full-Counter uses multiple counters to track distinct transaction stages, offering finer-grained monitoring and reducing detection latencies by up to hundreds of cycles at roughly 2.5x the area cost. The Full-Counter also provides detailed error logs for performance and bottleneck analysis. Evaluations at both IP and system levels confirm the TMU's effectiveness and low overhead. In GF12 technology, monitoring 16-32 outstanding transactions occupies 1330-2616 um2 for the Tiny-Counter and 3452-6787 um2 for the Full-Counter; moderate prescaler steps reduce these figures by 18-39% and 19-32%, respectively, with no loss of functionality. Results from a full-system integration demonstrate the TMU's robust and precise monitoring capabilities in safety-critical SoC environments.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2501_17605
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Towards Reliable Systems: A Scalable Approach to AXI4 Transaction Monitoring
Liang, Chaoqun
Benz, Thomas
Ottaviano, Alessandro
Garofalo, Angelo
Benini, Luca
Rossi, Davide
Hardware Architecture
In safety-critical SoC applications such as automotive and aerospace, reliable transaction monitoring is crucial for maintaining system integrity. This paper introduces a drop-in Transaction Monitoring Unit (TMU) for AXI4 subordinate endpoints that detects transaction failures including protocol violations or timeouts and triggers recovery by resetting the affected subordinates. Two TMU variants address different constraints: a Tiny-Counter solution for tightly area-constrained systems and a Full-Counter solution for critical subordinates in mixed-criticality SoCs. The Tiny-Counter employs a single counter per outstanding transaction, while the Full-Counter uses multiple counters to track distinct transaction stages, offering finer-grained monitoring and reducing detection latencies by up to hundreds of cycles at roughly 2.5x the area cost. The Full-Counter also provides detailed error logs for performance and bottleneck analysis. Evaluations at both IP and system levels confirm the TMU's effectiveness and low overhead. In GF12 technology, monitoring 16-32 outstanding transactions occupies 1330-2616 um2 for the Tiny-Counter and 3452-6787 um2 for the Full-Counter; moderate prescaler steps reduce these figures by 18-39% and 19-32%, respectively, with no loss of functionality. Results from a full-system integration demonstrate the TMU's robust and precise monitoring capabilities in safety-critical SoC environments.
title Towards Reliable Systems: A Scalable Approach to AXI4 Transaction Monitoring
topic Hardware Architecture
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.17605