Systems and methods are provided for managing data transmissions in integrated circuits using a handshake, credit path, and data path. For example, the handshake between transmission and receiving sides can enable information to be passed over a separate path from the data path. Based on a calculated round trip delay, the system can identify the number of top level flops or registers needed in the credit path, which can be the same as the number of top level flops or registers in the data path. The receiving side can calculate the required number of credits per requested virtual channel based on the available queuing resources of the receiving side and the round trip delay of the data path, in order to ensure full bandwidth data streaming on the channel.