Reuse Methodology Manual for System-on-a-Chip Designs

Silicon technology now allows us to build chips consisting of tens of millions of transistors. This technology promises new levels of system integration onto a single chip, but also presents significant challenges to the chip designer. As a result, many ASIC developers and silicon vendors are re-examining their design methodologies, searching for ways to make effective use of the huge numbers of gates now available.
These designers see current design tools and methodologies as inadequate for developing million-gate ASICs from scratch. There is considerable pressure to keep design team size and design schedules constant while design complexities grow. Tools are not providing the productivity gains required to keep pace with the increasing gate counts available from deep submicron technology. Design reuse - the use of pre-designed and pre-verified cores - is the most promising opportunity to bridge the gap between available gate-count and designer productivity.
Reuse Methodology Manual for System-On-A-Chip Designs outlines an effective methodology for creating reusable designs for use in a System-on-a-Chip (SoC) design methodology. Silicon and tool technologies move so quickly that no single methodology can provide a permanent solution to this highly dynamic problem. Instead, this manual is an attempt to capture and incrementally improve on current best practices in the industry, and to give a coherent, integrated view of the design process.
From the Foreword
`Synopsys and Mentor Graphics have joined forces to help make IP reuse a reality. One of the goals of our Design Reuse Partnership is to develop, demonstrate, and document a reuse-based design methodology that works. The Reuse Manual (RMM) is the result of this effort.'
Aart J. de Geus, Synopsys, Inc.
Walden C. Rhines, Mentor Graphics Corporation

Features of the Third Edition:

• UP TO DATE
• STATE OF THE ART
• REUSE AS A SOLUTION FOR CIRCUIT DESIGNERS
• A CHRONICLE OF "BEST PRACTICES"
• ALL CHAPTERS UPDATED AND REVISED
• GENERIC GUIDELINES-NON TOOL SPECIFIC
• EMPHASIS ON HARD IP AND PHYSICAL DESIGN

Reuse Methodology Manual for System-on-a-Chip Designs, Third Edition outlines a set of best practices for creating reusable designs for use in a SoC design methodology. These practices are based on the authors' experience in developing reusable designs, as well as the experience of design teams in many companies around the world. Silicon and tool technologies move so quickly that many of the details of design-for-reuse will undoubtedly continue to evolve over time. But the fundamental aspects of the methodology described in this book have become widely adopted and are likely to form the foundation of chip design for some time to come.

Development methodology necessarily differs between system designers and processor designers, as well as between DSP developers and chipset developers. However, there is a common set of problems facing everyone who is designing complex chips.

In response to these problems, design teams have adopted a block-based design approach that emphasizes design reuse. Reusing macros (sometimes called "cores") that have already been designed and verified helps to address all of the problems above. However, in adopting reuse-based design, design teams have run into a significant problem. Reusing blocks that have not been explicitly designed for reuse has often provided little or no benefit to the team. The effort to integrate a pre-existing block into new designs can become prohibitively high, if the block does not provide the right views, the right documentation, and the right functionality.

From this experience, design teams have realized that reuse-based design requires an explicit methodology for developing reusable macros that are easy to integrate into SoC designs. This manual focuses on describing these techniques.