Giovanni DeMicheli - Böcker

Concurrent design, or co-design of hardware and software, is important for meeting design goals, such as high performance, that are the key to commercial competitiveness. This text covers aspects of the subject, including methods and examples for designing: (1) general purpose and embedded computing systems based on instruction set processors; (2) telecommunication systems using general purpose digital signal processors as well as application specific instruction set processors; (3) embedded control systems and applications to automotive electronics. The book also surveys the areas of emulation and prototyping systems with field programmable gate array technologies, hardware/software synthesis and verification, and industrial design trends. Most contributions emphasize the design methodology, the requirements and state of the art of computer aided co-design tools, together with current design examples.

Dynamic power management is a design methodology aiming at controlling performance and power levels of digital circuits and systems, with the goal of extending the autonomous operation time of battery-powered systems, providing graceful performance degradation when supply energy is limited, and adapting power dissipation to satisfy environmental constraints. This text addresses design techniques and computer-aided design solutions for power management. Different approaches are presented and organized in an order related to their applicability to control-units, macro-blocks, digital circuits and electronic systems, respectively. All approaches are based on the principle of exploiting idleness of circuits, systems, or portions thereof. They involve both the detection of idleness conditions and the freezing of power-consuming activities in the idle components. The book also describes some approaches to system-level power management, including Microsoft's OnNow architecture and the "Advanced Configuration and Power Management" standard proposed by Intel, Microsoft and Toshiba.These approaches migrate power management to the software layer running on hardware platforms, thus providing a flexible and self-configurable solution to adapting the power/performance tradeoff to the needs of mobile (and fixed) computing and communication. It should be of interest to researchers and developers of computer-aided design tools for integrated circuits and systems, as well as to system designers.

Computer-aided synthesis of digital circuits from behavioural level specifications offers an effective means to deal with the increasing complexity of digital hardware systems. This book addresses both theoretical and practical aspects in the design of a high-level synthesis system that transforms a behavioural level description of hardware to a synchronous logic-level implementation consisting of logic gates and registers. The text addresses specific issues in applying high-level synthesis techniques to the design of ASICs. This complements previous results achieved in synthesis of general-purpose and signal processors, where data-path design is of utmost importance. In contrast, ASIC designs are often characterized by complex control schemes, to support communication and synchronization with the environment. The combined design of an efficient data-path control-unit is the major contribution of this book. Three requirements are important in modelling ASIC designs: concurrency, external synchronization and detailed timing constraints.The objective of the research work presented here is to develop a hardware model incorporating these requirements as well as synthesis algorithms that operate on this hardware model. The contributions of this book address both the theory and the implementation of algorithm for hardware synthesis.

Nanosystems use new, nanoscopic electrical and/or mechanical devices which, as constituents of electronic and electromechanical systems, find application primarily in computing, embedded control and biomedical data acquisition. In particular, this book will deal with the characterization and patterning of these materials from an engineering perspective, with the objective of creating operational prototypes and products.The book will integrate various nano technologies on materials, devices and systems and identify key areas and results. The book will describe different design aspects for integrated systems on silicon, as well as on heterogeneous platforms including, but not limited to, electrical, optical, micromechanical and biological components in various forms and mixtures. By associating research topics from differing horizons, the book will provide a unique opportunity to bridge the gap between electronics/electrical engineering and materials science. The book will include topics at the intersection of these disciplines, and will interface with computer science, biology and medicine.

Computer-aided synthesis of digital circuits from behavioral level specifications offers an effective means to deal with increasing complexity of digital hardware design. High Level Synthesis of ASICs Under Timing and Synchronization Constraints addresses both theoretical and practical aspects in the design of a high-level synthesis system that transforms a behavioral level description of hardware to a synchronous logic-level implementation consisting of logic gates and registers. High Level Synthesis of ASICs Under Timing and Synchronization Constraints addresses specific issues in applying high-level synthesis techniques to the design of ASICs. This complements previous results achieved in synthesis of general-purpose and signal processors, where data-path design is of utmost importance. In contrast, ASIC designs are often characterized by complex control schemes, to support communication and synchronization with the environment. The combined design of efficient data-path control-unit is the major contribution of this book. Three requirements are important in modeling ASIC designs: concurrency, external synchronization, and detailed timing constraints.The objective of the research work presented here is to develop a hardware model incorporating these requirements as well as synthesis algorithms that operate on this hardware model. The contributions of this book address both the theory and the implementation of algorithm for hardware synthesis.

Dynamic power management is a design methodology aiming at controlling performance and power levels of digital circuits and systems, with the goal of extending the autonomous operation time of battery-powered systems, providing graceful performance degradation when supply energy is limited, and adapting power dissipation to satisfy environmental constraints. Dynamic Power Management: Design Techniques and CAD Tools addresses design techniques and computer-aided design solutions for power management. Different approaches are presented and organized in an order related to their applicability to control-units, macro-blocks, digital circuits and electronic systems, respectively. All approaches are based on the principle of exploiting idleness of circuits, systems, or portions thereof. They involve both the detection of idleness conditions and the freezing of power-consuming activities in the idle components. The book also describes some approaches to system-level power management, including Microsoft's OnNow architecture and the `Advanced Configuration and Power Management' standard proposed by Intel, Microsoft and Toshiba. These approaches migrate power management to the software layer running on hardware platforms, thus providing a flexible and self-configurable solution to adapting the power/performance tradeoff to the needs of mobile (and fixed) computing and communication. Dynamic Power Management: Design Techniques and CAD Tools is of interest to researchers and developers of computer-aided design tools for integrated circuits and systems, as well as to system designers.

Nanosystems use new, nanoscopic electrical and/or mechanical devices which, as constituents of electronic and electromechanical systems, find application primarily in computing, embedded control and biomedical data acquisition. In particular, this book will deal with the characterization and patterning of these materials from an engineering perspective, with the objective of creating operational prototypes and products.The book will integrate various nano technologies on materials, devices and systems and identify key areas and results. The book will describe different design aspects for integrated systems on silicon, as well as on heterogeneous platforms including, but not limited to, electrical, optical, micromechanical and biological components in various forms and mixtures. By associating research topics from differing horizons, the book will provide a unique opportunity to bridge the gap between electronics/electrical engineering and materials science. The book will include topics at the intersection of these disciplines, and will interface with computer science, biology and medicine.

Synthesis is a crucial component of future CAll s;ystems. The competitive edge of IC desiBn will most probcbly come frc*'1l the use of effective synthesis tools. A complete synthesis system should generate layout masks from a high-level algorithmic, behavioral or functional des- cription of a VLSI systen, [1 description of the target tech- nology and a description of the constraints and cost func- tions. The design should be completed in reasonable time and with the quality a human designer could obtain. Working designs have been produced with silicon compilers, but the quality of the design has always been a problem. ~n1ile for a restricted class of designs, such 2S Digital Signal Processors (DSP) , the use of a fixed floor-plan has been successful, its use for less constrp.ined applications results in inefficient utilizstion of areE and poor perfor- mance. In addition, the structure of the control logic is of- ten too rigid end not optimized, thus yielding F: slm'! and large chip. The present trend is to bre8t: the synthesis pro- cess into stages, end to use tools thet optimize rep.l estate Bnd/or performance to go from one stege to the next.This book covers most of the topics in the design of di- gital VLSI Circuits, 2nd focuses on theory, as well as algo- rithms and co~puter implementations of desiGn systems.