Course Description. Interconnection networks form the communication backbone of computers at a variety of scales, from the internet to on-chip networks in multi-core/many-core architectures. With growing emphasis on parallelism as a means of extracting additional processor performance, the communication substrate is a critical factor in both the performance and power consumption of many-core architectures. This course will explore the architecture and design of interconnection networks including topology, routing, flow control and router microarchitecture. This course will also look into the impact on communication requirements of various parallel architectures and cache coherence mechanisms. This course will focus on interconnection network architectures used in multiprocessor systems and many-core designs with emphasis on recent research innovations in these areas.