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Lookup NU author(s): Ammar Karkar, Dr Terrence Mak, Professor Alex Yakovlev
This is the of an article that has been published in its final definitive form by Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, 2016.
For re-use rights please refer to the publisher's terms and conditions.
Networks-on-chip (NoC) have emerged to tackle different on-chip communication challenges and can satisfy different demands in terms of performance, cost and reliability. Currently, interconnects based on metal are reaching performance limits given relentless technology scaling. In particular, a performance bottleneck has emerged due to the demands for communication in terms of bandwidth for multicasting and broadcasting. As a result, various state-of-the-art architectures have been proposed as alternatives and emerging interconnects including the use of optics or radio frequency (RF). This article presents a comprehensive survey of these various interconnect fabrics, and discusses their current and future potentials and obstacles as well. This article aims to drive the research community to achieve a better utilization of the merits of on-chip interconnects and addresses the challenges involved. New interconnect technologies, such as optical interconnect, wireless NoC (WiNoC), RF transmission lines (RF-I) and surface wave interconnects (SWI), are discussed, evaluated and compared. Consequently, these emerging interconnects can continue to provide the cost efficiency and performance that are highly demanded for future many-core processors and high performance computing.
Author(s): Karkar A, Mak T, Tong KF, Yakovlev A
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: IEEE Circuits and Systems Magazine
Year: 2016
Volume: 16
Issue: 1
Pages: 58-72
Online publication date: 12/02/2016
Acceptance date: 01/01/1900
ISSN (print): 1531-636X
ISSN (electronic): 1558-0830
Publisher: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/MCAS.2015.2510199
DOI: 10.1109/MCAS.2015.2510199
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