This paper gives an overview of state-of-the-art regarding the network-on-chip (NoC) proposals. NoC paradigm replaces dedicated, design-specific wires with scalable, general purpose, multi-hop network. Numerous examples from literature are selected
to highlight the contemporary approaches and reported implementation results. The major trends of NoC research and aspects that require more investigations are pointed out. A packet-switched 2-D mesh is the most used and studied topology so far. It is also a
sort of an average NoC currently. Good results and interesting proposals are plenty. However, large differences in implementation results, vague documentation, and lack of comparison were also observed.
