Modeling Embedded Systems and SoC's

Foreword

When it first appeared in the mid-1990s, System-on-Chip (SoC) was arguably just a marketing term. At that point, the semiconductor fabrication process technology had achieved the scales of 350 and 250 nm, allowing the integration of only relatively simple digital systems. But, by the turn of the millennium, with 180, 150 and 130 nm processes available, many design teams were building true SoC devices.

These devices are systems in every sense of the word. They incorporate programmable processors (often with at least one RISC and one DSP), embedded memory, function accelerators implemented in digital logic, complex on-chip communications networks (traditional master–slave buses as well as network-on-a-chip), and analogue interfaces to the ...