Designing ASIPs With Confidence


Well-designed ASIPs with a strong SDK combine C/C++ programmability with the power and performance of dedicated hardware. Product families based on ASIP platforms are often highly flexible, capable of addressing multiple market segments with the same silicon and handling updates in the field. They lean well towards software-driven verification with few penalties for late product requirement cha... » read more

Softening Hardware: Using Application-Specific Processors to Optimize Modern SoC Designs


Over the past decade, the trend in SoC design has been to add more functionality into software, but moving functionality from hardware into software comes at a cost: software requires a processor, which, if not designed for optimal efficiency, could be slower and use more power than dedicated hardware. It often makes sense to implement smaller, specialized processors to tackle specific tasks wi... » read more

The Next Level Of Abstraction For System Design


Recently there have been a lot of discussions again about the next level of design abstraction for chip design. Are we there yet? Will we ever get there? Is it SystemC? UML/SysML perhaps? I am taking the approach of simply claiming victory: Over the last 20 years we have moved up beyond RTL in various areas—just in a fragmented way. However, the human limitations on our capacity for processin... » read more