The document discusses the evolving landscape of hardware and software design technologies, highlighting industry trends such as the emergence of shared manufacturing capabilities and the importance of platform-based design. It emphasizes the growing significance of software in development costs, the transition towards multi-core systems, and the necessity for outsourcing to maintain competitiveness. The need for innovative verification methods and the role of mixed-signal content in integrated circuits are also addressed.

1. The Future of Hardware and
Software Design Technologies James O’Riordan
CTO
Silicon & Software Systems (S3)
CEIA Conference, 21st October 2008
Copyright © 2007-2008 Silicon & Software Systems Limited

2. Agenda
Industry Background
Industry Trends
Consumer Electronics
IC Top Level
IC Verification
Analog / Mixed-Signal
Software
Outsourcing

3. Industry Background
•60 years since 1st transistor
•50 years since 1st IC
•Industry is in a maturing stage
•No longer 17% average growth
•Consolidation / re-structuring
•To play requires ‘long-term’ ability
•It can take 8 years to get to profits
•It can be an expensive journey
•Acknowledgements: Warren East (CEO, ARM), Maria Marced (VP Europe, TSMC),
colleagues, ITRS (http://www.itrs.net/reports.html)

4. Industry Trends
• Emergence of the Fabs
• Everyone has access to the same manufacturing
capability!
• Multi-project wafers (MPW) – share the cost of
prototypes
• Advancing geometries
– 130, 90, 65, 40, 28 …
– Cost a lot
– Need volume to justify
– What products have this
volume?
• But half of TSMC volume
is <=0.18um
Copyright © 2007-2008 Silicon & Software Systems Limited Slide 4

5. Who are S3?
The Connected Consumer Technology™ Company
Brief Statistics Consumer Portable
Founded in 1986 Size/weight
260+ Employees Battery Life
6 Design Centres Globally Function increase 2x / 2 years
Consumer Electronics Focus Time to market: ASAP
SoC Drivers Consumer Stationary
Cost
Processing performance
Form Factor
Mains powered (but regulations!!!)
Connection speed
Functionality in Software
Reliability
Life-in-Market longer

6. IC Top Level
Platform-based Re-use
Design 2007: 38% re-use
Speeds up design, 2010: 50% re-use
both IC & SW
Low power Electronic System
Very important Level design
Multi-core Going mainstream?
All major players
Supported suppliers

7. IC Verification
“Without major breakthroughs, design verification will
be a non-scalable, show stopping barrier”ITRS2007
• Functional coverage
• Constrained random verification
• Formal verification

8. Analog / Mixed-Signal (1)
The drivers for wireless communication are:
• Cost
• Frequency bands
• Power consumption
• Functionality
• Size of mobile units
• Very high volumes
• Standards and protocols
• 2007: 80% of TSMC ICs have
20% mixed-signal content
• 2010: 90% of TSMC ICs have
20% mixed-signal content

9. Analog Mixed-Signal (2)
• Mixed-Signal IP
– Don’t start from scratch each time
– Buy-in IP
– Economy of scale advantage
• DSP up to the Antenna
– Software Defined Radio
• Innovation in circuit design
• Smarter Simulation
• Redundant circuits(?)

10. Software
Software can account for 80% of the development cost
Software is an integral part of the system
• Good HW alone won’t get you Power savings
• Total system design must be considered
Move from proprietary micro-kernels to Linux / WinCE
• Possible component based design?
Multi-core
• Diminishing returns from increasing clock speed
• Enables multiple wireless stacks,
richer applications etc.
• Homogeneous and Heterogeneous processors
Software Defined Radio
Verification of Software
• Traditionally on-chip
• Virtual Platform?

11. Software Design Costs - ITRS

12. Outsourcing
• A start-up should not attempt to do everything itself
• Keep focused on market
• Design is outsource-able
– If you don’t do something very often,
you have less experience at it,
• slower
• more errors
• tool costs etc.
– If you can’t utilise one of
your resources 100% of
the time, why pay for it
100% of the time?
• Remember your competition is doing this …
Copyright © 2007-2008 Silicon & Software Systems Limited Slide 12

13. Questions?
Copyright © 2007-2008 Silicon & Software Systems Limited