Computer System Designs: System-on-Chip

8

What’s Next: Challenges Ahead

8.1 INTRODUCTION

With rapid advances in transistor density, it is time to look ahead to the future. One extreme is the completely autonomous system-on-chip (ASOC): a convergence of RFID (radio-frequency identification) technology with SOC technology coupled with transducers, sensor controllers, and battery, all on the same die. The major architectural implication is design for extremely low power (down to 1 µW or less) and a strict energy budget. This requires rethinking of clocking, memory organization, and processor organization. The use of deposited thin film batteries, extremely efficient radio frequency (RF) communications, digital sensors, and microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) completes the ASOC plan. Short of this extreme, there are many system configurations providing various trade-offs across power, RF, and speed budgets.

Throughout this text, it is clear that design time and cost are the major SOC limitations now and even more so in the future. One way to address these limitations is to develop a design process in which components can optimize and verify themselves to improve efficiency, reuse, and correctness, the three design challenges identified by the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors. Self-optimization and self-verification before and after design deployment are key to future SOC design.

This chapter has two parts. Part I covers the future system: ASOC. Part II covers the future design process: self-optimization ...