The Chip Is the Network: Toward a Science of Network-on-Chip Design
Foundations and Trends® in
Electronic Design Automation
Volume 2 Issue 4
DOI: 10.1561/1000000011
The Chip Is the Network: Toward a Science of Network-on-Chip Design
Radu Marculescu
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Carnegie Mellon
University, 5000 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA, radum@ece.cmu.edu
Paul Bogdan
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Carnegie Mellon
University, 5000 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA, pbogdan@ece.cmu.edu
SUGGESTED CITATION:
Radu
Marculescu
and
Paul
Bogdan
(2009)
"The Chip Is the Network: Toward a Science of Network-on-Chip Design",
Foundations and Trends® in Electronic Design Automation: Vol. 2: No 4, pp 371-461.
http:/dx.doi.org/10.1561/1000000011
Abstract
In this survey, we address the concept of network in three different contexts representing the deterministic, probabilistic,
and statistical physics-inspired design paradigms. More precisely, we start by considering the natural representation of networks
as graphs and discuss the main deterministic approaches to Network-on-Chip (NoC) design. Next, we introduce a probabilistic
framework for network representation and optimization and present a few major approaches for NoC design proposed to date.
Last but not least, we model the network as a thermodynamic system and discuss a statistical physics-based approach to characterize
the network traffic. This formalism allows us to address the network concept in the most general context, point out the main
limitations of the proposed solutions, and suggest a few open-ended problems.