Semiconductor Engineering: Data Movement Is the Energy Bottleneck of Today’s SoCs

In today’s AI-focused semiconductor landscape, raw compute performance alone no longer defines the effectiveness of a system-on-chip (SoC). The efficiency of data movement across the chip has become just as important. Whether designed for data centers or edge AI devices, SoCs must now prioritize data transport as a core architectural consideration. Moving data efficiently across the silicon fabric has become a central challenge as application workloads grow in complexity and scale across distributed resources. Inefficient data movement is often the primary bottleneck impacting overall system performance and power consumption.

This bottleneck becomes especially evident in AI workloads. Applications such as large language models and generative AI rely on trillions of data transactions per second. These models often require simultaneous access to memory, caches, and AI accelerators. Without an interconnect solution built to support high-throughput communication, these systems are quickly overwhelmed by congestion, increased latency, and power inefficiencies. This results in underutilized compute, excess energy consumption, and reduced overall system efficiency, even in high-performance designs.

Traditional interconnects, such as buses and crossbars, cannot handle today’s SoCs’ dynamic data flows and bandwidth demands. This has driven a shift toward packet-based network-on-chip (NoC) architectures. A NoC provides a structured and scalable approach to transporting data between the growing number of IP blocks in a chip. Instead of fixed wiring paths, NoCs send data in packets, which allows greater flexibility in routing, reduces physical wire count, and minimizes power consumption, all while improving performance.

Supporting AI Scalability and Chiplet Integration

The versatility of NoC IP lies in its ability to support multiple interface protocols, including AXI, AHB, OCP, and even custom implementations. Each intellectual property (IP) block connects through a Network Interface Unit (NIU), which adapts to that IP’s specific protocol, data width, or clock frequency. This allows the NoC to support communication between heterogeneous IP blocks, regardless of the mixing and matching of vendors or interface requirements. The modular nature of NIU-based connectivity supports reuse, simplifies clock and power domain crossings, and enables scalable integration without the need to re-architect the entire SoC

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