Over the past decade, system-on-chip (SoC) designs have evolved to address the ever increasing complexity of applications, fueled by the era of digital convergence. Improvements in process technology have effectively shrunk board-level components so they can be integrated on a single chip. New on-chip communication architectures have been designed to support all inter-component communication in a SoC design. These communication architecture fabrics have a critical impact on the power consumption, performance, cost and design cycle time of modern SoC designs. As application complexity strains the communication backbone of SoC designs, academic and industrial R&D efforts and dollars are increasingly focused on communication architecture design. On-Chip Communication Architecures is a comprehensive reference on concepts, research and trends in on-chip communication architecture design. It will provide readers with a comprehensive survey, not available elsewhere, of all current standards for on-chip communication architectures. A definitive guide to on-chip communication architectures, explaining key concepts, surveying research efforts and predicting future trends Detailed analysis of all popular standards for on-chip communication architectures Comprehensive survey of all research on communication architectures, covering a wide range of topics relevant to this area, spanning the past several years, and up to date with the most current research efforts Future trends that with have a significant impact on research and design of communication architectures over the next several years

[2]. The Cell Processor from Sony, Toshiba and IBM (STI) [3], and the Sun UltraSPARC T1 (formerly codenamed Niagara) [4] signal the growing popularity of such systems. Furthermore, Intel’s very recently announced 80-core TeraFLOP chip [5] exemplifies the irreversible march toward many-core systems with tens or even hundreds of processing elements. 1.2 The Dawn of the Communication-Centric Revolution The multi-core thrust has ushered the gradual displacement of the computati- centric design model by a more communication-centric approach [6]. The large, sophisticated monolithic modules are giving way to several smaller, simpler p- cessing elements working in tandem. This trend has led to a surge in the popularity of multi-core systems, which typically manifest themselves in two distinct incarnations: heterogeneous Multi-Processor Systems-on-Chip (MPSoC) and homogeneous Chip Multi-Processors (CMP). The SoC philosophy revolves around the technique of Platform-Based Design (PBD) [7], which advocates the reuse of Intellectual Property (IP) cores in flexible design templates that can be customized accordingly to satisfy the demands of particular implementations. The appeal of such a modular approach lies in the substantially reduced Time-To- Market (TTM) incubation period, which is a direct outcome of lower circuit complexity and reduced design effort. The whole system can now be viewed as a diverse collection of pre-existing IP components integrated on a single die.

Over the past decade, system-on-chip (SoC) designs have evolved to address the ever increasing complexity of applications, fueled by the era of digital convergence. Improvements in process technology have effectively shrunk board-level components so they can be integrated on a single chip. New on-chip communication architectures have been designed to support all inter-component communication in a SoC design. These communication architecture fabrics have a critical impact on the power consumption, performance, cost and design cycle time of modern SoC designs. As application complexity strains the communication backbone of SoC designs, academic and industrial R & D efforts and dollars are increasingly focused on communication architecture design. On-Chip Communication Architecures is a comprehensive reference on concepts, research and trends in on-chip communication architecture design. It will provide readers with a comprehensive survey, not available elsewhere, of all current standards for on-chip communication architectures. A definitive guide to on-chip communication architectures, explaining key concepts, surveying research efforts and predicting future trends Detailed analysis of all popular standards for on-chip communication architectures Comprehensive survey of all research on communication architectures, covering a wide range of topics relevant to this area, spanning the past several years, and up to date with the most current research efforts Future trends that with have a significant impact on research and design of communication architectures over the next several years.

Addresses the Challenges Associated with System-on-Chip Integration Network-on-Chip: The Next Generation of System-on-Chip Integration examines the current issues restricting chip-on-chip communication efficiency, and explores Network-on-chip (NoC), a promising alternative that equips designers with the capability to produce a scalable, reusable, and high-performance communication backbone by allowing for the integration of a large number of cores on a single system-on-chip (SoC). This book provides a basic overview of topics associated with NoC-based design: communication infrastructure design, communication methodology, evaluation framework, and mapping of applications onto NoC. It details the design and evaluation of different proposed NoC structures, low-power techniques, signal integrity and reliability issues, application mapping, testing, and future trends. Utilizing examples of chips that have been implemented in industry and academia, this text presents the full architectural design of components verified through implementation in industrial CAD tools. It describes NoC research and developments, incorporates theoretical proofs strengthening the analysis procedures, and includes algorithms used in NoC design and synthesis. In addition, it considers other upcoming NoC issues, such as low-power NoC design, signal integrity issues, NoC testing, reconfiguration, synthesis, and 3-D NoC design. This text comprises 12 chapters and covers: The evolution of NoC from SoC—its research and developmental challenges NoC protocols, elaborating flow control, available network topologies, routing mechanisms, fault tolerance, quality-of-service support, and the design of network interfaces The router design strategies followed in NoCs The evaluation mechanism of NoC architectures The application mapping strategies followed in NoCs Low-power design techniques specifically followed in NoCs The signal integrity and reliability issues of NoC The details of NoC testing strategies reported so far The problem of synthesizing application-specific NoCs Reconfigurable NoC design issues Direction of future research and development in the field of NoC Network-on-Chip: The Next Generation of System-on-Chip Integration covers the basic topics, technology, and future trends relevant to NoC-based design, and can be used by engineers, students, and researchers and other industry professionals interested in computer architecture, embedded systems, and parallel/distributed systems.

As the number of processor cores and IP blocks integrated on a single chip is steadily growing, a systematic approach to design the communication infrastructure becomes necessary. Different variants of packed switched on-chip networks have been proposed by several groups during the past two years. This book summarizes the state of the art of these efforts and discusses the major issues from the physical integration to architecture to operating systems and application interfaces. It also provides a guideline and vision about the direction this field is moving to. Moreover, the book outlines the consequences of adopting design platforms based on packet switched network. The consequences may in fact be far reaching because many of the topics of distributed systems, distributed real-time systems, fault tolerant systems, parallel computer architecture, parallel programming as well as traditional system-on-chip issues will appear relevant but within the constraints of a single chip VLSI implementation.

This book provides a comprehensive survey of recent progress in the design and implementation of Networks-on-Chip. It addresses a wide spectrum of on-chip communication problems, ranging from physical, network, to application layers. Specific topics that are explored in detail include packet routing, resource arbitration, error control/correction, application mapping, and communication scheduling. Additionally, a novel bi-directional communication channel NoC (BiNoC) architecture is described, with detailed explanation. Written for practicing engineers in need of practical knowledge about the design and implementation of networks-on-chip; Includes tutorial-like details to introduce readers to a diverse range of NoC designs, as well as in-depth analysis for designers with NoC experience to explore advanced issues; Describes a variety of on-chip communication architectures, including a novel bi-directional communication channel NoC. From the Foreword: Overall this book shows important advances over the state of the art that will affect future system design as well as R&D in tools and methods for NoC design. It represents an important reference point for both designers and electronic design automation researchers and developers. --Giovanni De Micheli

This book provides comprehensive coverage of Network-on-Chip (NoC) security vulnerabilities and state-of-the-art countermeasures, with contributions from System-on-Chip (SoC) designers, academic researchers and hardware security experts. Readers will gain a clear understanding of the existing security solutions for on-chip communication architectures and how they can be utilized effectively to design secure and trustworthy systems.