What NoCs with virtual channels really do for SoCs

By SemiWiki

October 5, 2015

Most of us understand the basic concept of a virtual channel: mapping multiple channels of traffic, possibly of mixed priority, to a single physical link. Where priority varies, quality of service (QoS) settings can help ensure higher priority traffic flows unimpeded. SoC designers can capture the benefits of virtual channels inside a chip with network-on-chip (NoC) strategies.

In theory, a NoC structure maintains a low latency while allowing IP blocks to initiate different classes of traffic to various destinations. A priori knowledge about traffic certainly helps design of any network topology. A small SoC with a NoC handling separate traffic classes – real-time, best effort, and mixed – might look like this at the conceptual level:

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