12.1 Conclusions
Network-on-chip (NoC) has evolved as a viable solution to the communication problem between cores in a system-on-chip (SoC). System cost, in terms of area, delay, power, and so on, has contributions from both computation and communication requirements. Individual cores can be designed efficiently to make computation faster, but communication may become a bottleneck. As discussed in all chapters, the solution is influenced by several factors. The first and foremost issue is the topology in which routers are to be connected. While regular topologies, such as mesh and tree, make the design process simpler with predictable link delay and power consumption values, irregular application-specific ...
