Using Platform Express for System-on-Chip Design

The advent of nanoscale technology brings with it an increase in system complexity with integrated circuit transistor numbers reaching hundreds of millions. Systems-on-chip are attaining a level of complexity where design turn-around times are a major factor. Reusing existing intellectual property blocks that are already verified for functionality could help minimize the design time and increase system reliability. This allows the designers to focus on more important product design aspects. Platform-based design is an effective method to deal with the increasing pressure on time-to-market. The approach also provides a practical solution to reduce the design and manufacturing costs. This thesis is a result of the of the ongoing Volunteer SoC project at the University of Tennessee and in this, we explore the possibility of employing the Platform Express (PX) tool for designing SoCs. The PX application enables system designers to rapidly build and verify SoC design concepts. The tool also promotes Intellectual Property (IP) integration within the built-in PX libraries. The tool utilizes XML for describing the IP data, which allows smooth integration of IP into a single design from many different sources. We have followed the complete IP integration flow and have successfully installed a component into the tool’s library and have also generated a system design using the same IP

The desegregation of design

ii To my parents and all my teachers iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Silent gratitude isn’t much use to anyone. —Gladys Bertha Stern (1890-1973). I would like to convey my sincere thanks to my academic and research advisor, Dr. Don Bouldin, for allowing me to pursue this research opportunity under his able guidance. I am thrilled that he let me lead the way here at UT, by being his first student to ever use Platform Express for SoC design. I gratefully acknowledge Dr. Gregory Peterson and Dr. Mohammed Ferdjallah for taking interest and serving on my committee. Without the Mentor Graphics ’ excellent tech support team, I would never have been able to finish what I started. Special thanks to Mr. Tomas Thoresen, for looking into each of my Service Requests and for patiently answering all my queries. Many thanks to Jiri “Mr. Leon ” Gaisler of Gaisler Research, for the ‘how to ’ on building the sparc-elfgc