This text presents a variety of topics, problems and approaches with the common theme to systematically organize the on-chip communication in the form of a regular, shared communication network on chip, a "NoC" for short. As the number of processor cores and IP blocks integrated on a single chip is steadily growing, a systematic approach to design the communication infrastructure becomes necessary. Different variants of packed switched on-chip networks have been proposed by several groups during the past two years. This book summarizes the state of the art of these efforts and discusses the major issues from the physical integration to architecture to operating systems and application interfaces. It also provides a guideline and vision about the direction this field is moving to. Moreover, the book outlines the consequences of adopting design platforms based on packet switched network.
The consequences may in fact be far reaching because many of the topics of distributed systems, distributed real-time systems, fault tolerant systems, parallel computer architecture, parallel programming as well as traditional system-on-chip issues will appear relevant but within the constraints of a single chip VLSI implementation. The book is organized in three parts. The first deals with system design and methodology issues. The second presents problems and solutions concerning the hardware and the basic communication infrastructure. Finally, the third part covers operating system, embedded software and application. However, communication from the physical to the application level is a central theme throughout the book.