Comparison of the Æthereal Network on Chip and Traditional Interconnects - Two Case Studies

The growing complexity of multiprocessor systems on chip make the integration of Intellectual Property (IP) blocks into a working system a major challenge. Networks-on-Chip (NoCs) facilitate a modular design approach which addresses the hardware challenges in designing such a system. Guaranteed communication services, offered by the Æthereal NoC, address the software challenges by making the system more robust and easier to design. This paper describes two existing bus-based reference designs and compares the original interconnects with an Æthereal NoC. We show through these two case study implementations that the area cost of the NoC, which is dominated by the number of network connections, is competitive with traditional interconnects. Furthermore, we show that the latency in the NoC-based design is still acceptable for our application.