This work is supported by the ESPRIT/OMI project ``ARCHES'' (ESPIRIT 20693), funded by the European Union. The major focus of the project is to accelerate the uptake of the high-speed HIC interconnect technology and IEEE 1355 standards in the marketplace. The HIC technology addresses in particular the marketplace for parallel systems interconnect and provides a major enabling technology for the Open Microprocessor systems Initiative. We deeply appreciate this financial support, without which this work would have not existed. Czarek Dubnicki helped us shape some of the ideas described in the paper, and provided useful feedback for the rest of them. George Kalokerinos, Thanos Oikonomou, and Gregory Maglis designed and implemented the prototype board described in the paper. George Milolidakis helped with the performance evaluation of the various DMA alternatives. Bob Dobinson provided useful feedback during the development of the ideas described in the paper. We thank all them.