This book deals with a practical approach to defining a system on a chip (SoC) architecture. It is written by practicing industry experts with cumulative five decades of hands-on experience. The book discusses how the system-level design challenges are addressed at the architecture stage and clearly defines different SoC subsystems and components. The book explains the practical method of determining system subsystems in system architectures. System on Chip (SOC) Architecture: A Practical Approach provides readers with a complete understanding of methods for defining SoC architecture.

Now in a thoroughly revised second edition, this practical practitioner guide provides a comprehensive overview of the SoC design process. It explains end-to-end system on chip (SoC) design processes and includes updated coverage of design methodology, the design environment, EDA tool flow, design decisions, choice of design intellectual property (IP) cores, sign-off procedures, and design infrastructure requirements. The second edition provides new information on SOC trends and updated design cases. Coverage also includes critical advanced guidance on the latest UPF-based low power design flow, challenges of deep submicron technologies, and 3D design fundamentals, which will prepare the readers for the challenges of working at the nanotechnology scale. A Practical Approach to VLSI System on Chip (SoC) Design: A Comprehensive Guide, Second Edition provides engineers who aspire to become VLSI designers with all the necessary information and details of EDA tools. It will be a valuable professional reference for those working on VLSI design and verification portfolios in complex SoC designs

Current multimedia and telecom applications require complex, heterogeneous multiprocessor system on chip (MPSoC) architectures with specific communication infrastructure in order to achieve the required performance. Heterogeneous MPSoC includes different types of processing units (DSP, microcontroller, ASIP) and different communication schemes (fast links, non standard memory organization and access). Programming an MPSoC requires the generation of efficient software running on MPSoC from a high level environment, by using the characteristics of the architecture. This task is known to be tedious and error prone, because it requires a combination of high level programming environments with low level software design. This book gives an overview of concepts related to embedded software design for MPSoC. It details a full software design approach, allowing systematic, high-level mapping of software applications on heterogeneous MPSoC. This approach is based on gradual refinement of hardware/software interfaces and simulation models allowing to validate the software at different abstraction levels. This book combines Simulink for high level programming and SystemC for the low level software development. This approach is illustrated with multiple examples of application software and MPSoC architectures that can be used for deep understanding of software design for MPSoC.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 11th Asia-Pacific Computer Systems Architecture Conference, ACSAC 2006. The book presents 60 revised full papers together with 3 invited lectures, addressing such issues as processor and network design, reconfigurable computing and operating systems, and low-level design issues in both hardware and systems. Coverage includes large and significant computer-based infrastructure projects, the challenges of stricter budgets in power dissipation, and more.

Increasing system complexity has created a pressing need for better design tools and associated methodologies and languages for meeting the stringent time to market and cost constraints. Platform-centric and platfo- based system-on-chip (SoC) design methodologies, based on reuse of software and hardware functionality, has also gained increasing exposure and usage within the Electronic System-Level (ESL) design communities. The book proposes a new methodology for realizing platform-centric design of complex systems, and presents a detailed plan for its implementation. The proposed plan allows component vendors, system integrators and product developers to collaborate effectively and efficiently to create complex products within budget and schedule constraints. This book focuses more on the use of platforms in the design of products, and not on the design of platforms themselves. Platform-centric design is not for everyone, as some may feel that it does not allow them to differentiate their offering from competitors to a significant degree. However, its proponents may claim that the time-- market and cost advantages of platform-centric design more than compensate for any drawbacks.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Architecture of Computing Systems, ARCS 2006, held in March 2006. The 32 revised full papers presented together with two invited and keynote papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 174 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on pervasive computing, memory systems, architectures, multiprocessing, energy efficient design, power awareness, network protocols, security, and distributed networks.

The 11 th IFIP International Conference on Very Large Scale Integration, in Montpellier, France, December 3-5,2001, was a great success. The main focus was about IP Cores, Circuits and System Designs & Applications as well as SOC Design Methods and CAD. This book contains the best papers (39 among 70) that have been presented during the conference. Those papers deal with all aspects of importance for the design of the current and future integrated systems. System on Chip (SOC) design is today a big challenge for designers, as a SOC may contain very different blocks, such as microcontrollers, DSPs, memories including embedded DRAM, analog, FPGA, RF front-ends for wireless communications and integrated sensors. The complete design of such chips, in very deep submicron technologies down to 0.13 mm, with several hundreds of millions of transistors, supplied at less than 1 Volt, is a very challenging task if design, verification, debug and industrial test are considered. The microelectronic revolution is fascinating; 55 years ago, in late 1947, the transistor was invented, and everybody knows that it was by William Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter H. Brattein, Bell Telephone Laboratories, which received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1956. Probably, everybody thinks that it was recognized immediately as a major invention.

With the rapid advances in technology, the conventional academic and research departments of Electronics engineering, Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, Instrumentation Engineering over the globe are forced to come together and update their curriculum with few common interdisciplinary courses in order to come out with the engineers and researchers with muli-dimensional capabilities. The gr- ing perception of the ‘Hardware becoming Soft’ and ‘Software becoming Hard’ with the emergence of the FPGAs has made its impact on both the hardware and software professionals to change their mindset of working in narrow domains. An interdisciplinary field where ‘Hardware meets the Software’ for undertaking se- ingly unfeasible tasks is System on Chip (SoC) which has become the basic pl- form of modern electronic appliances. If it wasn’t for SoCs, we wouldn’t be driving our car with foresight of the traffic congestion before hand using GPS. Without the omnipresence of the SoCs in our every walks of life, the society is wouldn’t have evidenced the rich benefits of the convergence of the technologies such as audio, video, mobile, IPTV just to name a few. The growing expectations of the consumers have placed the field of SoC design at the heart of at variance trends. On one hand there are challenges owing to design complexities with the emergence of the new processors, RTOS, software protocol stacks, buses, while the brutal forces of deep submicron effects such as crosstalk, electromigration, timing closures are challe- ing the design metrics.