SoC NoCs: Homegrown or Commercial Off-the-Shelf?

By Andy Nightingale, Arteris
DesignNews (April 29, 2024)

The developers of today’s system-on-chip (SoC) devices face a myriad of decisions. Some of the early choices start when defining the overall architecture of the device. Next comes the determination of which intellectual property (IP) functional blocks to be used and their origin.

Many IPs are purchased from trusted third-party vendors, such as processors from Arm and DDR memory controllers from Cadence or Synopsys, for example. Meanwhile, the secret-sauce IPs that will differentiate this SoC from its competitors are typically developed in-house. These IPs include specialized hardware accelerators, such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, and deep learning cores.

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