Winning the SoC Revolution

de Grant Martin

In 1998-99, at the dawn of the SoC Revolution, we wrote Surviving the SOC Revolution: A Guide to Platform Based Design. In that book, we focused on presenting guidelines and best practices to aid engineers beginning to design complex System-on-Chip devices (SoCs). Now, in 2003, facing the mid-point of that revolution, we believe that it is time to focus on winning. In this book, Winning the SoC Revolution: Experiences in Real Design, we gather the best practical experiences in how to design SoCs from the most advanced design groups, while setting the issues and techniques in the context of SoC design methodologies. As an edited volume, this book has contributions from the leading design houses who are winning in SoCs - Altera, ARM, IBM, Philips, TI, UC Berkeley, and Xilinx. These chapters present the many facets of SoC design - the platform based approach, how to best utilize IP, Verification, FPGA fabrics as an alternative to ASICs, and next generation process technology issues. We also include observations from Ron Wilson of CMP Media on best practices for SoC design team collaboration. We hope that by utilizing this book, you too, will win the SoC Revolution.