Designing SOCs with Configured Cores

2.3. The ad-hoc SOC Design Flow

The absence of a well-accepted, industry-standard SOC design flow has produced numerous ad-hoc approaches. The first step in one very popular approach is to design a simple microprocessor system like the one shown in Figure 2.3. This system closely resembles every simple microprocessor-based system designed since the Intel 4004 microprocessor became available in 1971.

Figure 2.3. This generic, microprocessor-based system is representative of many system designs. It is so successful because of the microprocessor’s inherent flexibility, not because this system-design matches the actual needs of a system.

The design ...