System-on-chip beyond the nanometer wall

Abstract

In this paper, we analyze the emerging trends in the design of complex Systems-on-a-Chip for nanometer-scale semiconductor technologies and their impact on design automation requirements, from the perspective of a broad range SoC supplier.We present our vision of some of the key changes that will emerge in the next five years. This vision is characterized by two major paradigm changes. The first is that SoC design will become divided into four mostly non-overlapping distinct abstraction levels. Very different competences and design automation tools will be needed at each level.The second paradigm change is the emergence of domain-specific S/W programmable SoC platforms consisting of large, heterogeneous sets of embedded processors. These will be complemented by embedded reconfigurable hardware and networks-on-chip. A key enabler for the effective us of these flexible SoC platforms, is a high-level parallel programming model supporting automatic specification-to-platform mapping.

Hybrid simulation for embedded software energy estimation

“…Figure 3 illustrates this process with a few examples. Note that array access b [1] in Figure 3 does not use the translation step, since it is a local variable in the native function. The dropin generator needs to distinguish at compile time between pointers that require explicit translation and those which do not, based on the possible memory locations that the pointer may point to.…”

“…Due to rapid growth in the complexity of embedded software (average software content is estimated to double every 10 to 12 months, i.e., faster than Moore's law [1]), software simulation is becoming the bottleneck in efficient system simulation. In spite of significant research effort over the last decade, software simulation is still very time-consuming for systems of realistic complexity, limiting the scope for architectural optimization and design space exploration.…”

On the design, control, and use of a reconfigurable heterogeneous multi-core system-on-a-chip

“…The continued progress in VLSI technologies allows us to put more cores (from dozens to hundreds) on a single chip to build a system-on-a-chip (SoC) system [11]. This kind of SoC system is commonly found in embedded systems which are prevalent in every aspect of our daily life, such as mobile terminals, portable game consoles, personal media players, etc.…”

“…Finally, we conclude in Section 7. Figure 1 shows the system architecture block diagram a typical heterogeneous multi-core SoC [11,18]. In a such system, there is a set of heterogeneous cores (processing elements) of different flexibility and computation characteristics allowing optimal execution of different tasks in the system.…”

Nomadik: AMobile Multimedia Application Processor Platform

“…The current deep submicron technology era presents two opposing challenges: rising SoC platform development costs and shorter product market windows [1]. The rising platform development costs are due to four main sources: the continued rise in gate count, the emergence of deep submicron effects, the rising proportion of embedded software development costs, and finally, rising mask set costs.…”