AUTOMATED SYSTEM FOR SoC (SYSTEM-ON-CHIP) DESIGN DEFINITION & GENERATION

Abstract

In the last decade, reconfigurable computing devices like FPGA's have emerged as the alternative for ASIC's and software programmed microprocessors, achieving much higher performance than software, while maintaining a higher level of flexibility than hardware. Although the design time of applications in FPGAs is still shorter than those of ASICs, programming FPGAs is still a complex exercise. Here we present a new design environment which brings hardware design onto the domain of a common programmer. An Interface based design methodology is adopted to achieve this goal. This dissertation presents in detail, the design and implementation of a novel tool which automates the design entry on a SoC (System-on-Chip). Also presented are the test libraries, built and experimented.