Interconnection technology

This project, which is collaboration between the School of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton and the Department of Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering at the University of Newcastle, focuses on the development of scalable, reliable and energy-efficient interconnection technology needed by future multi-billion-transistor system-on-chips (SoCs) designed using nanometer CIVICS technology. This is a timely and necessary investigation if the microelectronics industry is to continue to produce SoCs for future application at affordable cost, as identified by the 2003 International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors. Emphasis will be placed upon the employment of the emerging concept of Network-on-Chip (NoC) proposed to overcome complex onchip communication problems, where SoC cores communicate with each other using packets through interconnection network, thus providing support for communication infrastructure re-use, reliable and power efficient interconnection technology.For this research we will exploit expertise available at the collaborating universities that has recently produced efficient and low-power HW/SW co-design techniques that allow SoC designers to explore different system architectural designs (single/multi processors, hardware (ASIC and/or FPGA), asynchronous communication mechanisms (ACMs) and synchronization. The outcome of this research would be NoC based on-chip communication design methods, architectures, circuits and tools that are attractive for both industrial exploitation and further academic research. The research will be carried out in close collaboration with Prof P. Eles (Linkoping University, Sweden), Prof. L. Lavagno, Politecnico di Torino, and MBDA UK.