BAT-Hermes: A transition-signaling bundled-data NoC router

Networks on chip (NoCs) are efficient infrastructures to enable communication among the large number of IPs that compose modern systems on chip (SoCs). However, even if recent technologies allow the construction of such complex systems, they increase the cost and effort of designing a correct and efficient chip-wide clock delivery network for a fully synchronous system. Asynchronous NoCs are an attractive alternative, as they allow each IP to operate on an independent clock domain, eliminating the need for a global clock network and producing globally asynchronous locally synchronous (GALS) systems. This paper details the design of a low power NoC router that is asynchronous and employs a transition-signaling bundled-data design style. Results show reductions of 27% in energy consumption when compared to a similar synchronous router.