Interconnect and NoC Design Engineer

Project

Work done for a product or program.

• Design NoC topology — mesh, ring, crossbar or hierarchical tree — sized from traffic requirements supplied by system architects.
• Configure or author RTL for routers, network interface units, protocol bridges, width and clock converters and rate adapters.
• Analyse and prove deadlock and livelock freedom across the request/response dependency graph, including credit and virtual channel schemes.
• Build traffic models and run bandwidth/latency simulations against worst-case concurrent scenarios such as display refresh plus camera plus CPU burst.
• Design AMBA AXI, CHI, ACE, AHB and APB protocol interfaces and bridge between protocol versions and coherency models.
• Work with floorplanning to align the NoC topology with physical distances, adding pipeline stages where wire delay demands them.
• Implement address map decoding, security filtering hooks and error response handling consistent with the system address map.
• Support performance debug in silicon using interconnect monitors and performance counters.
• Own the interconnect power intent, including partition-aware clock gating and isolation at power-domain boundaries.

Function

Work that keeps the discipline running: methods, tools, suppliers and people.

• Implement quality-of-service mechanisms including arbitration policies, priority classes, bandwidth regulators and latency guarantees for real-time masters.

Project

1. Produce and hand over the role's key deliverables
   • NoC topology specification and configuration files
   • Interconnect RTL or generated fabric release
   • Bandwidth and latency analysis reports per traffic scenario
   • Deadlock freedom analysis and QoS policy documentation
   • System address map and decode configuration
   • Interconnect performance counter and monitor specification
2. Design the blockGeneral
   • Write or capture the design to the specification
   • Run lint, simulation or circuit checks
   • Close design reviews and their actions
3. Support integration and sign-offGeneral
   • Fix bugs found by verification
   • Support timing and physical closure
   • Deliver handoff files and documentation

Function

1. Keep design methods currentGeneral
   • Maintain coding and design standards
   • Build and maintain reusable blocks
2. Develop peopleGeneral
   • Mentor newer engineers
   • Run design reviews and knowledge sharing sessions