This paper presents a novel virtual-channel (VC)sharing technique for NoC architecture. The proposed architectureimproves the utilization of resources to enhance theperformance with minimal overheads. A heuristic approachtowards the proper VC sharing strategy is proposed, which isperformed by an adaptive algorithm that configures the VCsharing based on link load parameters. Architectural designto realize the adaptive VC sharing in generic router is elaborated.The technique can be applied to any NoC architecture,including 3-D NoCs. Extensive quantitative experiments withsynthetic and real benchmarks, including an integrated videoconference application, demonstrate considerable improvementin area and power efficiency compared to existing VC-based2D/3D NoC architectures.