Intra-chip Wireless Interconnect: The Road Ahead

On-chip wireless interconnects have been proposed to provide energy-efficient data communication paths between cores in System-on-Chips (SoCs) in the multi and many-core era. Networks-on-Chips (NoCs) when interconnecting hundreds of cores consume large amounts of energy and suffer from high and unpredictable latency due to congestion at intermediate routers. Wireless interconnects alleviate this problem by providing direct single-hop links between distant cores in the chip. While various wireless NoC (WiNoC) architectures have been proposed and evaluated in the in the past decade this technology is not yet adopted in the mainstream industry. In order to benefit from the past decade of research in WiNoC designs a few important myths regarding wireless interconnects need to be dispelled while propelling the research to tangible technology transfer. In this paper several vectors that define the design space of WiNoCs will be identified while highlighting the state-of-the-art accomplishments in those directions by leading research groups. This will be followed by identifying the future direction that needs to be pursued to make WiNoCs a mainstream reality. At the end a few potential high-impact use-cases for wireless interconnects are discussed.