Arteris Articles

Why is on-chip interconnect important for SoC innovation?
System-on-chip architectures are rapidly changing because we are moving from “data processing” chips to SoCs able to execute “decision making” models. The on-chip interconnect is the logical and physical means to create the SoC architecture so the importance of the network-on-chip (NoC) interconnect has increased as the need for architectural innovation has grown.

What developments do you see that Arteris IP is able to address?
We’re at a very exciting time because an important ingredient for performant SoCs has clearly become the on-chip interconnect and all the SoC architectural changes by our customers are influencing our technology development.

To many of us, if we ever think about interconnect on an SoC, we may think delay, power consumption, congestion, that sort of thing. All important points from an implementation point of view, but what about the functional and system implications? In the early days, interconnect was very democratic, all wires more or less equal, connecting X to Y wherever needed. If you had a data bus, you’d route that more carefully to ensure roughly equal delays for each bit, which works pretty well when you don’t have a lot of on-chip functions. But there’s more to it than that. This blog is a quick introduction to interconnect basics.