SOC design challenges for embedded systems

Abstract

Nowadays, LSIs can integrates billions of transistors on a chip. This means that a system or systems can be implemented in a LSI. Therefore in order to support new requirements of SOC (System on Chip) the LSI design methodology is required to be changed. SOC's are used inside embedded systems. In SOC design, it is required to achieve (1) system level optimization (2) application specific solution (3) reduction of LSI design cost (4) reduction of embedded software design cost. Platform approaches are proposed to solve these problems, but the lack of the flexibility in a platform is the most critical problem to use in the practical design. We proposed EXREAL Platform, which is the mother platform to generate application specific platforms. We are proposing the heterogeneous multi-core is better than the software solution on the standardized hardware platform. In order to achieve EXREAL Platform, we are developing three fundamental technologies that is (1) hardware interconnect technology (2) software interconnect technology (3) evaluation/validation technology. In this paper, the key concepts of EXREAL platform and some practical examples to achieve system level optimization are described.