Network-on-Chip design and synthesis outlook

With the growing complexity in consumer embedded products, new tendencies forecast heterogeneous Multi-Processor SystemsOn-Chip (MPSoCs) consisting of complex integrated components communicating with each other at very high-speed rates. Intercommunication requirements of MPSoCs made of hundreds of cores will not be feasible using a single shared bus or a hierarchy of buses due to their poor scalability with system size, their shared bandwidth between all the attached cores and the energy efficiency requirements of final products. To overcome these problems of scalability and complexity, Networks-On-Chip (NoCs) have been proposed as a promising replacement to eliminate many of the overheads of buses and MPSoCs connected by means of general-purpose communication architectures. However, the development of application-specific NoCs for MPSoCs is a complex engineering process that involves the definition of suitable protocols and topologies of switches, and which demands adequate design fl...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2008
• Where: INTEGRATION
• Authors: David Atienza, Federico Angiolini, Srinivasan Murali, Antonio Pullini, Luca Benini, Giovanni De Micheli
• Keywords: Application-specific Nocs, INTEGRATION 2008, Interconnect, Noc-based Interconnect