US Patent 11496418 Packet-based and time-multiplexed network-on-chip

An integrated circuit can include a Network-on-Chip (NoC) having a router network with first and second shared physical channels. The NoC includes one or more master bridge circuits (MBCs) coupled to the router network, where each MBC provides a packet-based interface to a master client circuit coupled thereto for initiating transactions over the router network. Each MBC sends and receives data for the transactions over the router network as flits of packets according to a schedule. The NoC includes one or more slave bridge circuits (SBCs) coupled to the router network, where each SBC provides a packet-based interface to a slave client circuit coupled thereto to for responding to the transactions over the router network. Each SBC sends and receives the flits over the router network according to the schedule. The flits sent from different client circuits are interleaved using time-multiplexing on the first and second shared physical channels.