The fast evolving landscape of on-chip communication - Selected future challenges and research avenues

As multi-core systems transition to the many-core realm, the pressure on the interconnection network is substantially elevated. The Network-on-Chip (NoC) is expected to undertake the expanding demands of the ever-increasing numbers of processing elements, while—at the same time—technological and application constraints increase the pressure for increased performance and efficiency with limited resources. Although NoC research has evolved significantly the last decade, essential questions remain un-answered and call for fresh research ideas and innovative solutions. In this paper, we summarize a selected set of NoC-related research challenges, with the hope to guide future development and trigger high-impact research progress.