Spidergon: a novel on-chip communication network

Summary form only given. The SoC (System on Chip) design demands for novel architectural and circuital solutions to cope with the global wires issue, pushing the on-chip communication as a crucial and precious resource. In the context of the communication centric paradigm and according to a layered based design, it is foreseen that current on-chip shared bus will be, at least partially, replaced by a micronetwork interconnection implementing a flexible packet-based communication (A. Jantsch and H. Tenhunen, "Networks on Chip", Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2003). We state that the availability of an efficient on-chip communication platform is one of the most important enabling factors for the development of efficient and cost effective multi processor SoC in the near and long-term future. This summary presents the low cost, high performance on-chip communication network, called Spidergon, developed by the AST (Advanced System Technology) of STMicroelectronics as the possible evolution of STBus technology.