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Network on Chip Architecture for Multi-Agent Systems in FPGA

Published: 22 November 2017 Publication History

Abstract

A system of interacting agents is, by definition, very demanding in terms of computational resources. Although multi-agent systems have been used to solve complex problems in many areas, it is usually very difficult to perform large-scale simulations in their targeted serial computing platforms. Reconfigurable hardware, in particular Field Programmable Gate Arrays devices, have been successfully used in High Performance Computing applications due to their inherent flexibility, data parallelism, and algorithm acceleration capabilities. Indeed, reconfigurable hardware seems to be the next logical step in the agency paradigm, but only a few attempts have been successful in implementing multi-agent systems in these platforms. This article discusses the problem of inter-agent communications in Field Programmable Gate Arrays. It proposes a Network-on-Chip in a hierarchical star topology to enable agents’ transactions through message broadcasting using the Open Core Protocol as an interface between hardware modules. A customizable router microarchitecture is described and a multi-agent system is created to simulate and analyse message exchanges in a generic heavy traffic load agent-based application. Experiments have shown a throughput of 1.6Gbps per port at 100MHz without packet loss and seamless scalability characteristics.

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  • (2021)Embbedded System-on-Chip 3D Localization and Mapping—eSoC-SLAMElectronics10.3390/electronics1012137810:12(1378)Online publication date: 9-Jun-2021

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    Published In

    cover image ACM Transactions on Reconfigurable Technology and Systems
    ACM Transactions on Reconfigurable Technology and Systems  Volume 10, Issue 4
    December 2017
    119 pages
    ISSN:1936-7406
    EISSN:1936-7414
    DOI:10.1145/3166118
    • Editor:
    • Steve Wilton
    Issue’s Table of Contents
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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    Publication History

    Published: 22 November 2017
    Accepted: 01 June 2017
    Revised: 01 April 2017
    Received: 01 September 2015
    Published in TRETS Volume 10, Issue 4

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    Author Tags

    1. Multi-agent systems
    2. agent-based simulation
    3. network-on-chip
    4. open core protocol

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    Funding Sources

    • Capital Markets Engineering project
    • Vice-Chancellor Research Scholarship (VCRS) from the University of Ulster

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    • (2021)Embbedded System-on-Chip 3D Localization and Mapping—eSoC-SLAMElectronics10.3390/electronics1012137810:12(1378)Online publication date: 9-Jun-2021

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