ParIS: a parameterizable interconnect switch for networks-on-chip

Abstract

Networks-on-Chip (NoCs) emerge as the solution for the problem of interconnecting cores (or IPs) in systems-on-chip (SoCs) which require reusable and scalable communication architectures. The building block of a NoC is its router (or switch), whose architecture has great impact on the costs and on the performance of the network. This work presents a parameterizable router architecture for NoCs which is based on a canonical template and on a library of building components offering different alternatives and implementations for the circuits used for packet forwarding in a NoC. Such features allow to explore the NoC design space in order to obtain a router configuration which best fits the performance requirements of a target application at lower silicon costs. We describe the router architecture and present some synthesis results which demonstrate the feasibility of this new router.