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This paper proposes a novel network interface design method, referred to as mutual interface definition based method. It decouples resource dependent part (RDP) from resource independent part (RIP) by mutual interface definition. These two parts can be designed independently, thus the design flexibility and reusability of network interface can be enhanced. Moreover, a network interface component library consisting of multiple RDP and RIP components is proposed to be built. The networks-on-chip designers can choose appropriate components from the library to construct network interface design. From the perspective of RDP, the network interface achieves backward compatibility with the existing protocols such as AMBA AHB and OCP. From the perspective of RIP, the network interface provides a configurable structure supporting multicast transfer and adaptive routing algorithm extensions. The proposed network interface designs are implemented in TSMC 90-nm CMOS standard cell technology and can work at the frequency of 1.12 GHz to 1.35 GHz.

The emulation and functional validation are essential to the assessment of the correctness and performance of networks-on-chip architecture. A flexible hardware/software networks-on-chip open platform (NoCOP) emulation framework is designed and implemented for exploring the on-chip interconnection network architectures. An instruction set simulator and universal serial bus communicator control and configure the emulation parameters and process that are running on the host computer as active elements in the emulation framework. The experimental results show that the proposed emulation/verification framework can speed up the simulation, preserve the cycle accuracy and decrease the usage of the resources of field programmable gate array.