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    Author(s)
    Display Name
    Bernat Ollé
    Affiliation
    Affiliation
    Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya
    Display Name
    Pau Talarn
    Affiliation
    Affiliation
    Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya
    Affiliation
    Affiliation
    Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya
    Display Name
    Filip Lemic
    Affiliation
    Affiliation
    i2CAT Foundation
    Display Name
    Eduard Alarcón
    Affiliation
    Affiliation
    UPC Barcelona Tech
    Display Name
    Sergi Abadal
    Affiliation
    Affiliation
    Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya
    Abstract

    Wireless communications at the chip scale emerge as a interesting complement to traditional wire-based approaches thanks to their low latency, inherent broadcast nature, and capacity to bypass pin constraints. However, as current trends push towards massive and bandwidth-hungry processor architectures, there is a need for wireless chip-scale networks that exploit and share as many channels as possible. In this context, this work addresses the issue of channel sharing by exploring the design space of multi-channel Medium Access Control (MAC) protocols for chip-scale networks. Distinct channel assignment strategies for both random access and token passing are presented and evaluated under realistic traffic patterns. It is shown that, even with the improvements enabled by the multiple channels, both protocols maintain their intrinsic advantages and disadvantages.