System-on-a-chip
It refers to integrating all components of a computer or other electronic system into a single integrated circuit. digital, analog, mixed-signal, and often radio-frequency functions may be done by the chip all on a single chip substrate. The SoC , as compared to microcontrollers has more powerful processors, capable of running software such as Windows or Linux, which need external memory chips (flash, RAM) to be useful, and which are used with various external peripherals.
Structure
A SOC may consist of:
-One microcontroller, microprocessor or DSP core
-Timing sources including oscillators and PLL.
-Memory which maybe ROM, RAM, EEPROM and flash
-External interfaces like USB, FireWire, Ethernet, USART, SPI.
-Analog interfaces like DAC and ADC.
-Voltage regulators and power management circuits.
Design flow
SoC consists of both the hardware described above, and the software that controls the microcontroller, microprocessor or DSP cores, peripherals and interfaces.The pre-qualified hardware blocks together with the software drivers that control their operation are where we start. protocol stacks driving industry-standard interfaces like USB are important. The hardware blocks are put together using CAD tools; the software modules are integrated using a software development environment.In emulation process, which is a key process, the hardware is mapped onto an emulation platform based on a field programmable gate array (FPGA) that mimics the behavior of the SoC.
Fabrication
several technologies used are:
-Full custom
-Standard cell
-FPGA
The process consume less power and have a lower cost and higher reliability than the multi-chip systems that they replace. But, like most VLSI designs, the total cost is higher for one large chip than for the same functionality distributed over several smaller chips
for more:
http://en.wikipediawiki/System-on-a-chip
http://ieee-soccindex.html
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for ppt:
http://ce.sharif.edu/courses/84-85/1/ce2...Design.ppt
http://thedude.cc.gt.atl.ga.us/conferenc...ases-7.ppt