Interconnects

Everything about on-chip and inter-chip communication

• OpenSource Implementations

  • On-Chip

  • Inter-chip

• Resources

  • Articles

  • Books

  • Misc

• Industry Standards

• Research avenues

OpenSource Implementations

On-Chip

• Wishbone Interconnect - A well-documented, popular open source standard compatible with most open-source IP.

• WishBone to AXI - A Pipelined Wishbone B4 to AXI4 bridge

• AXI Stream Components - Collection of AXI Stream bus components. Most components are fully parametrizable in interface widths.

• AXI Components - Verilog AXI components for FPGA implementation

• AXI4 - AXI4 and AXI4-Lite interface definitions and testbench utilities

• Building a custom yet functional AXI-lite slave

• TNoC - Network on Chip implementation written in SystemVerilog

• AMBA AXI VIP - TVIP-AXI is an UVM package of AMBA AXI4 VIP

• OpenSoCFabric - A Network-On-Chip Generator

Inter-chip

• Ethernet Components - Collection of Ethernet-related components for gigabit, 10G, and 25G packet processing (8 bit and 64 bit datapaths).
• Corundum - Corundum is an open-source, high-performance FPGA-based NIC.
• Compute Express Link aka CXL Compute Express Link (CXL) is a new breakthrough high-speed CPU interconnect that enables a high-speed, efficient performance between the CPU and platform enhancements and workload accelerators.

Resources

• Great resource on simulators, research reading etc for interconnects - The Network-on-Chip blog
• NSF funded projects on NoCs - Shows distribution of funds across universities and types of work being carried out
• AXI3/4 Cheatsheet - Handy quick reference for ARM on-chip protocol standards
• Designing a Skid Buffer - Implementing a fundamental element in on-chip interconnects

Articles

• How PCI-Express works and why you should care?
• Flexibly Scalable High Performance Architectures with Embedded Photonics
• Interconnect Prominence In Fail-Operational Architectures
• AXI verification
• Lessons learned while building crossbar interconnects
• Eating The Interconnect Alphabet Soup With Intel’s CXL
• Inside HPE’s Gen-Z Switch Fabric
• Silicon-Interconnect Fabric
• Why on-chip networks are so critical to IP integration
• The Gatekeeper of a Successful Design is the Interconnect
• How to Measure and Optimize the System Performance of a RTL Design

Books

• On-chip Networks - Synthesis Lectures on Computer Architecture
• A Primer on Memory Consistency and Cache Coherence
• Principles and Practices of Interconnection Networks - A book by William J Dally

Misc

• Lightwave Research Laboratory - Research programs on optical interconnection networks for advanced computing systems, data centers, optical packet-switched routers, and nanophotonic networks-on-chip for chip multiprocessors

Industry Standards

• CCIX Consortium - Develop and promote adoption of an industry standard specification to enable coherent interconnect technologies between general-purpose processors and acceleration devices for efficient heterogeneous computing.
• ARM joins CXL

Research avenues

• Hot Interconnects - Symposium on High-Performance Interconnects
• International Symposium on Networks-on-Chip (NOCS) is dedicated to interdisciplinary research on on-chip, package-scale, chip-to-chip, and datacenter rack-scale communication technology, architecture, design methods, applications and systems.
• NoCArc - Held in conjunction with MICRO, NoCArc provides a forum for researchers to discuss implementation of multi-core systems on chip.