
1
CHAPTER
1.1 TRENDS IN SYSTEM-ON-CHIP DESIGN
Advances in silicon technology continue to leapfrog projections: At the time this
book was being written, we were seeing numerous announcements for billion-
transistor chips, whereas only a few years ago integrated circuit transistor counts were
in the millions. Such single chip integrated circuits are commonly referred to as system-
on-chip (SoC), and typically consist of several complex heterogeneous components
such as programmable processors, dedicated (custom) hardware to perform specifi c
tasks, on-chip memories, input–output interfaces, and an on-chip communication
architecture that serves as ...