From Asics To Socs

From ASICs to SOCs: A Practical Approach, by Farzad Nekoogar and Faranak Nekoogar, covers the techniques, principles, and everyday realities of designing ASICs and SOCs. Material includes current issues in the field, front-end and back-end designs, integration of IPs on SOC designs, and low-power design techniques and methodologies. Appropriate for practicing chip designers as well as graduate students in electrical engineering.

This book describes RTL design using Verilog, synthesis and timing closure for System On Chip (SOC) design blocks. It covers the complex RTL design scenarios and challenges for SOC designs and provides practical information on performance improvements in SOC, as well as Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) designs. Prototyping using modern high density Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) is discussed in this book with the practical examples and case studies. The book discusses SOC design, performance improvement techniques, testing and system level verification, while also describing the modern Intel FPGA/XILINX FPGA architectures and their use in SOC prototyping. Further, the book covers the Synopsys Design Compiler (DC) and Prime Time (PT) commands, and how they can be used to optimize complex ASIC/SOC designs. The contents of this book will be useful to students and professionals alike.

This book describes RTL design, synthesis, and timing closure strategies for SOC blocks. It covers high-level RTL design scenarios and challenges for SOC design. The book gives practical information on the issues in SOC and ASIC prototyping using modern high-density FPGAs. The book covers SOC performance improvement techniques, testing, and system-level verification. The book also describes the modern Xilinx FPGA architecture and their use in SOC prototyping. The book covers the Synopsys DC, PT commands, and use of them to constraint and to optimize SOC design. The contents of this book will be of use to students, professionals, and hobbyists alike.

This cutting-edge resource offers you an in-depth understanding of metamodeling approaches for the reuse of intellectual properties (IPs) in the form of reusable design or verification components. The book covers the essential issues associated with fast and effective integration of reusable design components into a system-on-a-chip (SoC) to achieve faster design turn-around time. Moreover, it addresses key factors related to the use of reusable verification IPs for a "write once, use many times" verification strategy - another effective approach that can attain a faster product design cycle.

In 1998-99, at the dawn of the SoC Revolution, we wrote Surviving the SOC Revolution: A Guide to Platform Based Design. In that book, we focused on presenting guidelines and best practices to aid engineers beginning to design complex System-on-Chip devices (SoCs). Now, in 2003, facing the mid-point of that revolution, we believe that it is time to focus on winning. In this book, Winning the SoC Revolution: Experiences in Real Design, we gather the best practical experiences in how to design SoCs from the most advanced design groups, while setting the issues and techniques in the context of SoC design methodologies. As an edited volume, this book has contributions from the leading design houses who are winning in SoCs - Altera, ARM, IBM, Philips, TI, UC Berkeley, and Xilinx. These chapters present the many facets of SoC design - the platform based approach, how to best utilize IP, Verification, FPGA fabrics as an alternative to ASICs, and next generation process technology issues. We also include observations from Ron Wilson of CMP Media on best practices for SoC design team collaboration. We hope that by utilizing this book, you too, will win the SoC Revolution.

Engineering the Complex SOC The first unified hardware/software guide to processor-centric SOC design Processor-centric approaches enable SOC designers to complete far larger projects in far less time. Engineering the Complex SOCis a comprehensive, example-driven guide to creating designs with configurable, extensible processors. Drawing upon Tensilica’s Xtensa architecture and TIE language, Dr. Chris Rowen systematically illuminates the issues, opportunities, and challenges of processor-centric design. Rowen introduces a radically new design methodology, then covers its essential techniques: processor configuration, extension, hardware/software co-generation, multiple processor partitioning/communication, and more. Coverage includes: Why extensible processors are necessary: shortcomings of current design methods Comparing extensible processors to traditional processors and hardwired logic Extensible processor architecture and mechanisms of processor extensibility Latency, throughput, coordination of parallel functions, hardware interconnect options, management of design complexity, and other issues Multiple-processor SOC architecture for embedded systems Task design from the viewpoints of software andhardware developers Advanced techniques: implementing complex state machines, task-to-task synchronization, power optimization, and more Toward a “sea of processors”: Long-term trends in SOC design and semiconductor technology For all architects, hardware engineers, software designers, and SOC program managers involved with complex SOC design; and for all managers investing in SOC designs, platforms, processors, or expertise. PRENTICE HALL Professional Technical Reference Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458 www.phptr.com