System on Chip designchapter 1

NaseeruddinAsst Prof.

Dept of ECE,BITM,Bellary

History• 1958: First integrated circuit

– Flip-flop using two transistors– Built by Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments

• 2003– Intel Pentium 4 mprocessor (55 million transistors)– 512 Mbit DRAM (> 0.5 billion transistors)

• 53% compound annual growth rate over 45 years– No other technology has grown so fast so long

• Driven by miniaturization of transistors– Smaller is cheaper, faster, lower in power!– Revolutionary effects on society

Motivation for SOC design

• What is driving the industry to develop the SoC design methodology?

– Higher productivity levels– Lower overall cost– Lower overall power– Smaller form factor– Higher integration levels– Rapid development of derivative designs

Moore’s Law• 1965: Gordon Moore plotted transistor on

each chip– Fit straight line on semilog scale– Transistor counts have doubled every 26 months

Integration Levels

SSI: 10 gates

MSI: 1000 gates

LSI: 10,000 gates

VLSI: > 10k gates

More----

• Transistor counts have doubled every 26 months for the past three decades.

Year

Transistors

40048008

8080

8086

80286Intel386

Intel486Pentium

Pentium ProPentium II

Pentium IIIPentium 4

1,000

10,000

100,000

1,000,000

10,000,000

100,000,000

1,000,000,000

1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000

SOC• The VLSI manufacturing technology advances has made possible

to put millions of transistors on a single die. It enables designers to put systems-on-a-chip that move everything from the board onto the chip eventually.

• or• SoC is a high performance microprocessor, since we can program

and give instruction to the uP to do whatever you want to do.

or• SoC is the efforts to integrate heterogeneous or different types

of silicon IPs on to the same chip, like memory, uP, random logics, and analog circuitry.

• All of the above are partially right, but not very accurate!!!

Then, What is SOC ?• SoC not only chip, but more on “system”.

SoC = Chip + Software + Integration• The SoC chip includes:

Embedded processor

ASIC Logics and analog circuitry

Embedded memory• The SoC Software includes:

OS, compiler, simulator, firmware, driver, protocol stackIntegrated development environment (debugger, linker, ICE)Application interface (C/C++, assembly)

• The SoC Integration includes :• The whole system solution• Manufacture consultant• Technical Supporting

• “Highly integrated device.Also known as system on silicon, system- on-a-chip, system-LSI, system-ASIC”

Our view of an SoC design is defined by extensive use ofreusable IP blocks, and mixed HW/SW design issues:– Programmable processor– Embedded memory– Digital signal processors– System bus + interfaces– Embedded programmable logic– Embedded software– Analog components

Scaling

• Assignment : Ref: MOSFET Scaling and Small Geometry

Effects, Sung Me Kung” CMOS Digital IC Analysis and Design pp:115-129

Comparison• SOC:Defined• SIP: It Is a Package that contains more than

one integrated Circuit(IC).• SOB: System on Board

SOC is driven by cost reduction then by Miniaturization. Hence Lowest cost solution

SIP is primarily driven by miniaturization ; not the Lowest cost solution

SOC SIP

Power Low Medium to High

Performance(Clk Speed)

High Medium

Design flexibility High Low to Medium

System Design Flexibility

Low High

IP Availability Medium High

Unit cost Low Medium-High

Development Cost/Time

High Low-Medium

EDA tools Mature Limited

Available Design services

High Limited

Comparison

Benefits

• There are several benefits in integrating a large digital system into a single integrated circuit .

• These include– Lower cost per gate .– Lower power consumption .– Faster circuit operation .– More reliable implementation .– Smaller physical size .– Greater design security .

The Drawbacks

• The principle drawbacks of SoC design are associated with the design pressures imposed on today’s engineers , such as :

– Time-to-market demands .– Exponential fabrication cost .– Increased system complexity .– Increased verification requirements

Design Productivity Gap issues

Solutions1.Elevation of the design process to ESL2. Design Re-use• Overcome complexity and verification issues by designing

Intellectual Property (IP) to be re-usable .• Done on such a scale that a new industry has been developed.• Design activity is split into two groups:

– IP Authors – producers .– IP Integrators – consumers .

• IP Authors produce fully verified IP libraries – Thus making overall verification task more manageable

• IP Integrators select, evaluate, integrate IP from multiple vendors– IP integrated onto Integration Platform designed with specific

application in mind

Thank You