Engineering the Complex SOC: Fast, Flexible Design with Configurable Processors

by Chris Rowen

Engineering the Complex SOC The first unified hardware/software guide to processor-centric SOC design Processor-centric approaches enable SOC designers to complete far larger projects in far less time. Engineering the Complex SOCis a comprehensive, example-driven guide to creating designs with configurable, extensible processors. Drawing upon Tensilica’s Xtensa architecture and TIE language, Dr. Chris Rowen systematically illuminates the issues, opportunities, and challenges of processor-centric design. Rowen introduces a radically new design methodology, then covers its essential processor configuration, extension, hardware/software co-generation, multiple processor partitioning/communication, and more. Coverage For all architects, hardware engineers, software designers, and SOC program managers involved with complex SOC design; and for all managers investing in SOC designs, platforms, processors, or expertise. PRENTICE HALL
Professional Technical Reference
Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458

492 pages, Paperback

First published June 4, 2004

Reviews

[Kursad Albayraktaroglu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Integrated circuit design is such a fast-changing field that books on the subject tend to age by "dog years", and become mostly historic texts in 10 to 12 years after their publication. For this reason, I did not have very high expectations from reading a 16-year old book on SoC (system-on-chip) architecture. However, it was very interesting to realize that most of Rowen's predictions of the future direction of SoC design held up really well : indeed, the modern SoCs of 2020 are mostly processor-centric designs where many smaller microprocessors have replaced custom logic. In addition to making Rowen rich (he was the founder of Tensilica), this trend has made SoC design more software-centric with every passing year.

In 2005, this book would have been highly valuable to gain insights on the SoC design direction of the future. In 2020, it is mostly useful to understand how the current design approaches have taken shape over the years. The sections on instruction set extensions and extensible architectures like Tensilica are also interesting, but by now there are better references on these.