US Patent 8042087 Method to design network-on-chip (NOC)-based communication systems

A method to design a Networks on Chips (NoCs)-based communication system for connecting on-chip components in a multicore system, said system comprising several elements communicating through the communication system, said communication system comprising at least switches, said method comprising the steps of modelling the applications running on the multicore system, establishing the number and configuration of switches to connect the elements, establishing physical connectivity between the elements and the switches, for each two pairs of communicating elements: (a) a defining a communication path, (b) calculating metrics as affected by the need to render said path into physical connectivity, taking into account any previously defined physical connectivity, (c) iterating the steps a and b for a plurality of possible paths, (d) choosing the path having the optimal metrics, and (e) establishing any missing physical connectivity between the switches so that the selected optimal path occurs across physically connected switches.