System and method for self-healing of a dynamic link

Abstract

A Network-on-Chip (NoC) link with an upstream bypassable narrowing serialization adapter and a downstream bypassable widening serialization adapter, which are able to heal a link, without losing throughput, by using one or a small number of sideband signals to bypass individual known-bad wires. The serialization adapters are normally bypassed. To avoid sending information on broken wires, bypassing is disabled so that information is serialized to only a portion of the link. Serialization can be applied to any portion of a link down to as little as one bit wire.

What is claimed is: 
     
         1 . A method of adapting the serialization of a link in a NoC, the method comprising:
 disabling a bypass of a narrowing serialization adapter upstream of a link; and   disabling a bypass of a widening serialization adapter downstream of a link.   
     
     
         2 . The method of  claim 1 , further comprising detecting a bad wire of the link. 
     
     
         3 . The method of  claim 2 , wherein the detecting step comprises:
 driving a copy of a signal of a first wire of the link on a sideband wire;   comparing the value of the signal of the first wire to the value of the sideband wire;   driving a copy of the signal of a second wire of the link; and   comparing the value of the signal of the second wire to the value of the sideband wire.   
     
     
         4 . A system for adapting serialization of a link comprising:
 means for disabling a bypass of a narrowing serialization adapter upstream of a link; and   means for disabling a bypass of a widening serialization adapter downstream of a link.