Scott Whitney Gould

Managing power and performance for system-on-chip designs using Voltage Islands

This paper discusses Voltage Islands, a system architecture and chip implementation methodology, that can be used to dramatically reduce active and static power consumption for System-on-Chip (SoC) designs. As technology scales for increased circuit density and performance, the need to reduce power consumption increases in significance as designers strive to utilize the advancing silicon capabilities. The consumer product market further drives the need to minimize chip power consumption.Effective use of Voltage Islands for meeting SoC power and performance requirements, while meeting Time to Market (TAT) demands, requires novel approaches throughout the design flow as well as special circuit components and chip powering structures. This paper outlines methods being used today to design Voltage Islands in a rapid-TAT product development environment, and discusses the need for industry EDA advances to create an industry-wide Voltage Island design capability.

Issues and strategies for the physical design of system-on-a-chip ASICs

The density and performance of advanced silicon technologies have made system-on-a-chip ASICs possible. SoCs bring together a diverse set of functions and technology features on a single die of enormous complexity. The physical design of these complex ASICs requires a rich set of functional elements that integrate efficiently with a set of design flows and tools productive enough to meet product requirements successfully, without consuming more time or design resources than a simpler design. The architecture described, including functional libraries and physical design conventions, enables the creation of multiple SoC ASIC designs from a common infrastructure that addresses silicon integration, electrical robustness, and packaging challenges. An implementation strategy follows from this design infrastructure that includes hierarchical design concepts, placement, routing, and verification processes.

An SRAM-based FPGA architecture

An SRAM-based FPGA architecture has been developed using a licensed AT6000 architecture base. The logic-cell architecture exploits an efficient, medium-grained, fixed library cell that implements most frequently used synthesis functions. An internal routing structure enables dense designs using a highly connected grid-based routing system and a dedicated I/O routing structure that supports the highest I/O counts available. Dynamic reconfiguration is retained with an underlying SRAM structure like the AT6000.