Industry Expert Blogs

The need for Network-on-Chip (NoC) has appeared at the time where chip makers realized that they could really integrate a complete system on a single die to build a System-on-Chip (SoC). I was in charge of the development of a large IC, integrating different type of functions (Analog and Digital) to support advanced TV application. It was a long development, far to be easy, but the chip was not a SoC (even if at that time -1995- it was using the largest array available in TI ASIC technology). There was no integrated CPU, no SRAM and no High Speed Interconnect I/O. The SoC definition we agree in the industry is that the chip at least integrates a CPU (or GPU) core, then some amount of internal SRAM (or DRAM) and various peripheral functions specific to the Application. Considering this definition, “real” SoC designs have appeared in the early 2000. There are certainly exceptions to this rule, or designs integrating an embedded CPU earlier, but this were reserved to very high production volume projects.

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