Exploiting intellectual properties with imprecise design costs for system-on-chip synthesis

Byoung-Woon Kim, Chong-Min Kyung
2002 IEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integration (vlsi) Systems  
This paper presents an intellectual property (IP)-based system-on-chip (SoC) synthesis framework focusing on how to select IPs from different sources and how to integrate the selected IPs using on-chip buses. In order to synthesize an on-chip bus-based SoC architecture using IPs with imprecise design costs, we propose a possibilistic mixed integer linear programming (PMILP) model, which is converted into an equivalent mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model without increasing the
more » ... onal complexity. Then, the equivalent MILP model is solved to decide whether each IP is selected or not, and to locate the selected IP on the optimal on-chip bus of a hierarchical bus architecture that consists of on-chip buses with different bus attributes. Experimental results on an MP3 decoding system show that the IP-centric design space with uncertainty can be successfully explored using the proposed scheme. Index Terms-Exploration, hierarchical bus architecture, imprecise design costs, intellectual property (IP), MP3 decoding, on-chip bus, possibilistic mixed integer linear programming (PMILP), system-on-chip (SoC), uncertainty. I. INTRODUCTION T HE HUGE number of transistors available in nowadays system-on-chip (SoC) gives system designers both challenges and opportunities [1]- [3] . The gap between silicon capacity and design productivity is still growing and threatening to slow down the growth of semiconductor industry. To reduce the gap, reusable building blocks [also known as intellectual property (IP)] would be extensively used so that more than 80% of a typical SoC design will be filled with IPs in 2009 [4]. Therefore, there is a need for a framework that helps system designers decide whether each IP is selected or not, and synthesize an SoC architecture through tradeoffs between various conflicting design constraints [5]- [8] . Furthermore, the framework must exploit IPs with imprecise design costs, e.g., imprecise area, energy consumption, execution time, design time, and design quality, because IPs are developed in different companies with different design skills and technologies, with their details typically not available to the user before use. Recently, several researches on the selection of IPs from different sources have been reported. In [9]-[12], web-based IP catalogs have been developed to search and retrieve IPs. In [13] , an internet-based intelligent software system helps the user pick up IPs using the fuzzy logic-based reasoning. Furthermore, several metrics have been developed to measure the qualities of IPs
doi:10.1109/tvlsi.2002.1043327 fatcat:ix5yhqv7und7xfyumapksmrtou