System-on-Chip Design

10.    Course Goals (acquired competencies):  Introducing the concepts for designing systems on a chip: elements of the system in the chip – processor, memory, communication paths. Upon completion of the course, students will be able to work independently and to start projecting systems on a chip.

11.    Course Syllabus: Introduction to the design of a system on a chip (SOC). System architecture. Components in the system: processor, memory and connectivity. Hardware and software in the SOC: programmability versus performance. Approaches to designing a SOC. Basic characteristics of the SOC: speed, and power consumption. Trade-off in choosing these parameters when designing processors. Reliability and configuration of the SOC. Choosing processors for the SOC. Basic concepts in processor architectures. An example of processors for SOC: vectors, VLIW processors and superscalar processors. Memory in the chip. Cache memory and cache memory on multiple levels.  Memory out of the chip. DRAM memory. Interaction between processor and memory. Standard busses for connecting systems in the chip. Adjusting the SOC. Mapping the design into reconfigurable logic. Practical application of systems in the chip. Applications in cryptography. Application of the SOC for image processing, video and 3D graphics. Other applications.