Challenges and Promising Results in NoC Prototyping Using FPGAs

Although a significant amount of theoretical work supports the potential of NoC architectures, such results need to be demonstrated by actual implementations before the NoC paradigm becomes a reality. Besides demonstrating the feasibility of the overall approach, prototyping enables accurate evaluation of power, performance, area, and various design trade-offs. This article presents four NoC prototypes, discusses the challenges associated with their design, and assesses the potential of the NoC approach.