of the interconnect the resulting area savings can translate directly into cost reduction of an ic or fpga the option hdrpenalty none can be used when low latency and or high bandwidth are desired this solution can be expensive in terms of wire usage but in a modem system on a chip soc design the number of links that require these stringent requirements is limited the option hdrpenalty one is an option that can be used by a main interconnect in an soc this solution can be wire efficient while still providing high bandwidth and acceptable latency numbers the option hdrpenalty two is an option that can be used by control and peripheral interconnect structures this solution can provide high wire efficiency combined with somewhat reduced performance the option hdrpenalty auto is an option that can be used by service interconnect structures where wire efficiency is an important design parameter in one implementation the selection of a packet format can be made on a link per link basis for example the two independent parameters hdrpenalty nbyteperword defining the packet format can be selected differently for every link allowing further optimization of the noc 100 since physical links in a noc may have different performance requirements a packet format can be chosen optimally for each link reducing area and power consumption since a noc for a complex soc such as a cell phone application processor or video processing chip can contain many links there are many configuration decisions that need to be managed in one implementation the selection of the parameters can.