Architectures, components, and software tools for system-on-chip design and implementation

微电子制造技术的改进继续使得能够将许多组件集成到单个芯片上以用于各种应用，诸如计算机系统、便携式电话和其它消费产品以及复杂的生物医学装置。这种类型的集成具有许多优点，包括更高的性能，降低功耗以延长便携式和嵌入式系统的电池寿命，以及物理上更小的设备和系统。为了帮助单芯片系统的设计人员解决开发此类系统的任务的复杂性，拟议的研究将调查新的架构，组件和软件工具，实现高度集成的芯片。架构定义了如何在逻辑上组织处理、存储器和其他组件，以便在单个芯片内实现。组件本身可以定制，以提供适合特定应用程序的适当功能。最后，复杂的软件工具可以帮助设计人员选择、配置适当的组件，并将其组合到最适合实现的架构中。鉴于单芯片系统的高度复杂性，其目标是尽可能多地自动化从架构概念到详细实现的整个过程。由于实际实现高度集成的定制芯片来表征新架构、组件和软件工具的优点是一项昂贵的工作，因此拟议的研究将依赖于使用预制的可编程芯片和相关的软件工具，将设计规范转换为这些芯片的硬件配置。微电子制造技术的进步使这些可编程芯片具有与定制芯片相同的优势，因此可编程芯片的容量不断增长，足以用于在本研究中产生的大型单芯片设计的原型实现。从这种方法中获得的经验和结果可以应用于定制芯片的实现。

Improvements in microelectronics fabrication technology continue to enable the integration of many components onto a single chip for use in a variety of applications such as computer systems, portable telephones and other consumer products, and sophisticated biomedical devices. This type of integration has many benefits including higher performance, reduced power consumption for longer battery life in portable and embedded systems, and physically smaller devices and systems. In order to aid the designers of single-chip systems in addressing the complexity of the task of developing such systems, the proposed research will investigate novel architectures, components, and software tools for implementing highly-integrated chips. Architectures define how the processing, memory, and other components are logically organized for implementation within a single chip. The components themselves can be customized to provide the appropriate functionality to suit a particular application. Finally, sophisticated software tools can aid designers in selecting, configuring, and combining the appropriate components into the most suitable architectures for implementation. Given the high complexity of single-chip systems, the aim is to automate as much of the entire process from architectural conception to detailed implementation as possible. Because the actual implementation of highly-integrated custom chips to characterize the benefits of new architectures, components, and software tools is an expensive undertaking, the proposed research will rely on the use of prefabricated, programmable chips and the associated software tools for converting design specifications into hardware configurations for these chips. Advances in microelectronics fabrication technology have given these programmable chips the same benefits as customized chips, hence the growing capacities of programmable chips are sufficient for prototype implementation of large single-chip designs that will be generated in the pursuit of this research. The experience and results that are obtained from this approach can then be applied to the implementation of custom chips.