An interconnection network for a novel reconfigurable circuit board

This paper presents a programmable interconnection network for a novel multi-reticle integrated circuit providing a reconfigurable circuit board for rapid system prototyping. This multi-dimensional mesh grid network, called WaferNettrade, can actively interconnect any pair of pins of integrated circuits deposited on the configurable system board. Two crossbar architectures are implemented and compared, one based on crosspoints and one based on standard cell multiplexers. Implementation results show the feasibility of this proposed cell-based array network that could interconnect a very large number of nodes, spread over an area that could fill a whole wafer, using a typical 6-metal 0.18 mum CMOS technology.