Integrated circuits with reduced interconnect overhead

Abstract

Integrated circuits are provided that use on-chip data compression and decompression to minimize consumption of interconnect resources. Parallel-to-serial converter circuitry can use time-division multiplexing techniques to compress data. The compressed data may be conveyed between circuit blocks on the integrated circuit using a reduced number of parallel interconnect conductors. After the compressed data has been conveyed to its destination, a serial-to-parallel converter may use time-division demultiplexing techniques to decompress the data. Interconnect resources may be shared by dedicated circuits. With this arrangement, signals can be selectively steered through the appropriate dedicated circuitry to either maximize performance or to use compression and decompression to minimize interconnect resource consumption.