Dynamic Reconfigurable NoCs: Characteristics and Performance Issues

In traditional System-on-Chip design it is possible to know in advance the actual communication requirements, the application needs and all the components (modules) needed to realize the desired architecture. They can be understood a priori, at synthesis-time by the analysis of the application specification. For this reason, once all the components of the system have been defined, they will remain unchanged throughout the life cycle of the system. In dynamically changing environments, on the contrary, the design factors are likely to change, in that the dynamic nature of the target system does not allow to be fully understood at design time. This chapter describes and analyzes several different issues that arise when designing a reconfigurable NoC. In this particular scenario it is not possible to utilize a generic NoC infrastructure on a generic reconfigurable system, since the interactions between the issues of the two difabStract