Simulator boosts NoC interconnect

Professor Bashir Al-Hashimi, pictured, and his team at the University’s School of Electronics & Computer Science (ECS) have developed NIRGAM – Network on Chip Interconnect RoutinG and Applications Modelling) – a simulator which is said to make it possible to connect the various cores which exist within an SoC. According to Professor Al-Hashimi, current interconnection techniques will not be adequate to support more powerful devices, due to limited bandwidth scalability. “The microelectronics industry predicts that, in 2008, SoCs will contain more than 50 processing and memory blocks and this will increase to 100 cores in 2012,” he said. Prof Al-Hashimi, along with Professor Alex Yakovlev from the University of Newcastle, secured funding from the EPSRC in 2005 to develop the next generation of interconnection technology for multiprocessor SoCs, from which NIRGAM has been developed. Prof Al-Hashimi noted: “The availability of such a simulator is vital for researchers, since it will enable them to evaluate quickly their routing algorithms and applications on a NoC platform, and without the need to develop long programs.”