A flexible circuit switched NOC for FPGA based systems

Increases in chip density due to Moore´s Law allow for the implementation of ever larger and more complex systems on a single chip. The communication mechanisms employed in such SOC´s is an important contribution to their overall performance. Networks on chip promise to overcome the scalability problems found in bus-based interconnect. Most work to this point has focused on packet-switched NOC´s. Circuit-switched networks are a lightweight alternative that promise high communication rates and predictable communication latencies. This paper describes PNoC, a very flexible circuit-switched NOC suitable for use in FPGA-based systems. Implementation results on a Virtex-il Pro device are given using an image binarization demonstration which resulted in a 2 - 23x speedup with a 29% area overhead compared to a shared bus implementation.