2D mesh
Beginner
A grid of roads connecting the cores, like city blocks: each core connects to the ones directly above, below, left and right.
Novice
An on-chip network layout where cores sit on a grid and each is linked only to its four nearest neighbors. Data going farther takes several steps (hops) through the cores in between.
Expert
A mesh has node degree 4, diameter and half the bisection bandwidth of the equivalent torus. Its short, equal-length wires lay out well on a die, which is why it dominates large on-chip networks.
Explained in Dataflow and spatial meshes (Architectures).
See also: Network-on-chip (NoC), Router (on-chip network), Dimension-order (XY) routing.