An FPGA Based Open Source Network-on-Chip Architecture

Networks on chip (NoC) has long been seen as a potential solution to the problems encountered when implementing large digital hardware designs. In this paper we describe an open source FPGA based NoC architecture with low area overhead, high throughput and low latency compared to other published works. The architecture has been optimized for Xilinx FPGAs and the NoC is capable of operating at a frequency of 260 MHz in a Virtex-4 FPGA. We have also developed a bridge so that generic Wishbone bus compatible IP blocks can be connected to the NoC.