Overview
Many system-engineering concepts and "best practices" with respect to system design are no longer valid at the chip level. For example, bus-centric design--made popular by the introduction of the first commercial microprocessor in 1971--continues to dominate on-chip design 36 years later even though nanometer silicon has completely changed the rules of system interconnect.
This presentation discusses and openly questions several of these outdated system-design concepts and "best practices" including:
Amdahl's Law, which does not apply to embedded system design
Moore's Law, which no longer gives us faster chips that consume less energy each year
Processors, which are no longer expensive or slow
Wires, which are no longer faster than gates
Buses, which conserve wires at the expense of clock frequency and resource conflicts
Presenter
Steven Leibson, Product Marketing Manager, Tensilica Inc.
Steven Leibson is the Technology Evangelist for Tensilica, Inc. He formerly served as the Vice President of Content and Editor in Chief of the Microprocessor Report, Editor in Chief of EDN Magazine, and Founding Editor in Chief of Embedded Developers Journal magazine. He has conducted many seminars and tutorials on system design around the world, has written hundreds of articles that appeared in many of the world's industry trade magazines, and has won many industry awards for his writing. He published the book "Designing SOCs with Configured Cores" in 2006, which discusses the concepts of IP-driven and processor-centric SOC design for the 21st century. This book advocates across-the-board advances in system design, leaving behind antiquated ASIC design styles that are now almost two decades old. Leibson received his degree from Case Western Reserve University and worked in industry as a design engineer and engineering manager for leading-edge system-design companies including as Hewlett-Packard and Cadnetix. Leibson is an IEEE Senior Member.
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