System on Chip (SoC) design aims to integrate heterogeneous components like processors, memory, analog circuits onto a single chip to achieve benefits like lower cost, power consumption, and physical size. Moore's law has allowed increasing transistor counts on chips over decades. Early SoCs integrated thousands of gates while modern ones integrate millions of transistors. Challenges include meeting time-to-market demands and managing increasing design complexity and verification requirements. Solutions involve raising the design process to higher abstraction levels, reusing pre-verified intellectual property blocks from different vendors to simplify verification.

1. System on Chip design
chapter 1
Naseeruddin
Asst Prof.
Dept of ECE,BITM,Bellary

3. History
• 1958: First integrated circuit
– Flip-flop using two transistors
– Built by Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments
• 2003
– Intel Pentium 4 processor (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

4. 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

6. 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

7. More----
• Transistor counts have doubled every 26
months for the past three decades.
1,000,000,000
100,000,000
Pentium 4
Pentium III
10,000,000 Pentium II
Pentium Pro
Transistors
Pentium
Intel486
1,000,000
Intel386
80286
100,000
8086
10,000 8080
8008
4004
1,000
1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000
Year

8. 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!!!

9. 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

10. • “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 of
reusable 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

11. Scaling
• Assignment :
Ref: MOSFET Scaling and Small Geometry
Effects, Sung Me Kung” CMOS Digital IC
Analysis and Design pp:115-129

12. Comparison
• SOC:Defined
• SIP: It Is a Package that contains more than
one integrated Circuit(IC).
• SOB: System on Board

13. 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 High Medium
Speed)
Design flexibility High Low to Medium
System Design Low High
Flexibility
IP Availability Medium High
Unit cost Low Medium-High
Development High Low-Medium
Cost/Time
EDA tools Mature Limited
Available Design High Limited
services

14. Comparison

15. 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 .

16. 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

17. Design Productivity Gap issues

19. Solutions
1.Elevation of the design process to ESL
2. 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

20. Thank You