On-Chip Communication Architectures

101

CHAPTER

On-chip communication architectures have numerous sources of delay due to

signal propagation along the wires, synchronization (e.g., handshaking), trans-

fer modes (e.g., pipeline access, burst transfer, etc.), arbitration mechanisms for

congestion management, cross-bridge transfers, and data packing/unpacking at

the interfaces. These communication delays can signifi cantly infl uence the per-

formance of system-on-chip (SoC) applications, and are in fact, a major cause of

bottlenecks in many designs. It is therefore important to consider these delays

when exploring SoC applications, in order to get an accurate estimation of the

system ...