Trend and Challenge on System-on-a-Chip Designs

The success of system-on-a-chip (SoC) hinges upon a well-concerted integrated approach from multiple disciplines, such as device, design, and application. From the device perspective, rapidly improving VLSI technology allows the integration of billions of transistors on a single chip, thus permitting a wide range of functions to be combined on one chip. From the application perspective, numerous killer applications have been identified, which can make full use of the aforementioned functionalities provided by a single chip. From the design perspective, however, with greater device integration, system designs become more complex and are increasingly challenging to design. Moving forward, novel approaches will be needed to meet these challenges. This paper explores several new design strategies, which represent the current design trends to deal with the emerging issues. For example, recognizing the stringent requirements on power consumption, memory bandwidth/latency, and transistor variability, novel power/thermal management, multi-processor SoC, reconfigurable logic, and design for verification and testing have now been incorporated into modern system design. In addition, we look into some plausible solutions. For example, further innovations on scalable, reusable, and reliable system architectures, IP deployment and integration, on-chip interconnects, and memory hierarchies are all anticipated in the near future.