Breaking Barriers in SoC Design with Smart NoC Automation

What you’ll learn:

• Challenges in NoC design.
• The paradigm shift to NoC automation.
• Real-world performance gains with automated smart NoC IP generation.
• A smarter approach to NoC design.

The evolution of semiconductor design has driven modern systems-on-chip (SoCs) to unprecedented levels of complexity. Today’s leading-edge SoCs often integrate hundreds of intellectual-property (IP) blocks, spanning multiple processing units, specialized accelerators, and high-speed interconnects. This rapid expansion is further fueled by the rise of multi-die architectures to extend scalability and performance beyond the limitations of traditional monolithic designs.

These advances come with significant challenges, particularly in managing the interconnect fabric that enables seamless data flow across the chip. Traditional interconnect solutions, such as crossbars and bus-based architectures, have given way to networks-on-chip (NoCs), which provide scalable, high-bandwidth communication while optimizing power efficiency.

Engineers must still manually implement certain aspects of the NoC design, though, making the process labor-intensive. Any time design tasks are done manually, errors may be introduced. However, as the scale of SoCs increases, NoC design has reached a tipping point where manual implementation is no longer feasible. 

Challenges in NoC Design

Designing an efficient NoC is a multifaceted process involving numerous interdependencies. It begins with defining the communication requirements for each IP block, specifying interface protocols, data widths, and performance constraints. Designers must also determine the topology of the NoC, selecting from options such as mesh or tree configurations to optimize bandwidth, latency, and area.

Routing congestion presents another difficulty, particularly in advanced process nodes where wire delays increase interconnect density, exacerbating power dissipation and signal integrity challenges. Designers must balance the tradeoffs between power, performance, and area (PPA) while ensuring the NoC integrates seamlessly with the broader SoC architecture.

The growing number of processing elements further complicates these efforts, requiring precise tuning of buffers, pipeline stages, and more to maintain efficiency. Such tradeoffs have to be carefully managed to optimize overall performance.

The Paradigm Shift Toward NoC Automation

Given these challenges, the industry must move toward automated solutions that leverage machine-learning (ML) heuristics and smart algorithms to optimize NoC generation. Automated NoC generation requires a smart NoC IP to address several pain points in traditional design methodologies.

Automating NoC design can reduce development cycles by an order of magnitude, cutting iteration times from weeks to days. Automated NoC solutions eliminate time-consuming manual adjustments, enabling rapid design exploration and convergence. Engineers can iterate through multiple NoC configurations in significantly less time, evaluating various tradeoffs with minimal manual intervention.

This accelerated workflow not only shortens overall project timelines, but it also allows teams to respond quickly to changing design requirements, ensuring more efficient resource utilization.

Smart algorithms identify optimal NoC layouts, minimizing wire length by over 20% and reducing latency by 10% or more. By analyzing connectivity patterns and traffic demands, these algorithms ensure that data paths are as efficient as possible while avoiding congestion and excessive routing complexity.

Automated topology optimization also accounts for physical design constraints, such as placement blockages and timing closure challenges, to create an interconnect fabric that balances high performance with power efficiency. This results in a more scalable and adaptable NoC architecture capable of meeting the demands of AI, HPC, and other data-intensive applications without unnecessary overhead or bottlenecks.

With support for both monolithic SoCs and multi-die architectures, automation ensures high-performance connectivity across diverse designs. As SoCs continue to grow in complexity, integrating multiple compute elements, accelerators, and memory subsystems, NoC automation provides the flexibility to adapt interconnect designs to various configurations.

That adaptability is critical for next-generation applications in AI, HPC, and automotive systems. Heterogeneous processing elements in these systems must efficiently collaborate within a unified design.

Advanced automation incorporates placement and routing constraints, reducing congestion and improving silicon area efficiency. By integrating physical design awareness early in the NoC generation process, automated solutions ensure that interconnects are optimized for logical performance.

The smart NoC IP analyzes floorplan constraints, identifying optimal routing paths that minimize wire length and reduce timing bottlenecks. In addition, it accounts for power distribution, thermal considerations, and congestion hotspots, leading to better overall silicon utilization. This results in a more predictable design flow, with fewer iterations needed during place-and-route, ultimately accelerating time-to-tapeout while maintaining high-performance interconnect integrity.

Real-World Performance Gains

Leading semiconductor companies have implemented automated smart NoC IP generation, reporting significant improvements in both productivity and silicon efficiency. In one instance, a development team working on an ADAS SoC transitioned from a manual NoC design process to an automated workflow.

Initially, topology generation took 20 hours with manual methods, which was later optimized to three hours by experienced NoC engineers. However, with automation, the same task required just four hours initially, with subsequent iterations taking only 10 minutes.

Another example involves an solid-state disk (SSD) controller SoC, where a manual NoC design required 33 hours for topology editing and pipelining. Using an automated approach, this was reduced to 5.5 hours, an 83% decrease in design time. In addition to the time savings, the total wire length was reduced by 25%, directly improving power efficiency and performance.

A Smarter Approach to NoC Design

This level of automation is essential for meeting the demands of modern SoC design, where manual interconnect implementation is no longer practical. For example, Arteris’s FlexGen smart NoC IP provides breakthrough solutions, leveraging advanced algorithms to intelligently automate NoC generation while ensuring optimal performance, power efficiency, and scalability (see figure).

Another advantage of FlexGen is physical awareness, which ensures that NoC designs align with floorplan constraints and routing requirements early in the process. This improves timing closure, reduces congestion, and optimizes silicon area, making the design flow more predictable and efficient.

Furthermore, FlexGen enhances silicon efficiency by addressing wire management challenges in advanced process nodes. Its intelligent heuristics optimize data-path routing, further minimizing congestion and improving energy efficiency.

FlexGen smart NoC IP supports a dual-interface approach for both graphical and script-based design. This lets designers iteratively refine interconnect topologies while maintaining control over key parameters such as performance, congestion, and physical design constraints. Engineers can fine-tune connectivity while maintaining efficiency and scalability throughout the design process. FlexGen enables a combination of automated NoC generation and manual tuning, ensuring that design teams can adjust NoC implementations as needed.

By integrating seamlessly with physical design tools, FlexGen smart NoC IP helps speed up development cycles, reduce wire congestion, and enhance silicon utilization.

As semiconductor complexity continues to rise, the role of NoC automation becomes increasingly critical in enabling efficient, scalable, and high-performance SoC designs. Automated NoC solutions empower semiconductor companies to accelerate innovation across AI, HPC, automotive, and storage applications by eliminating manual bottlenecks, reducing design time, and optimizing interconnect efficiency.

The shift toward automation isn’t just a convenience—it’s a necessity for meeting the demands of next-generation computing architectures.