ABSTRACT
Constant technology scaling enables the integration and implementation of increasingly complex functionalities onto a single chip. Nowadays advancements in chip manufacturing technology allow the integration of several hardware components into a single integrated circuit reducing both manufacturing costs and system dimensions. System-on-a-Chip (SoC) can integrate several Intellectual Property (IPs) and industry chip vendors are releasing multicore products with increasing core counts [18]. This multicore trend may lead to hundreds and even thousands of cores integrated on a single chip. As core counts increase, there is a corresponding increase in bandwidth demand to facilitate high core utilization. The basic performance of the processing elements are of no use unless the data can be fed to them at the appropriate rates. System-on-chip (SoC) architectures are indeed getting communication-bound and a scalable and high-bandwidth communication fabric becomes critically important [29]. It is clear that there is a critical need for scalable interconnection fabrics.
