For over three decades now, silicon capacity has steadily been doubling
every year and a half with equally staggering improvements continuously
being observed in operating speeds. This increase in capacity has
allowed for more complex systems to be built on a single silicon chip.
Coupled with this functionality increase, speed improvements have fueled
tremendous advancements in computing and have enabled new multi-media
applications. Such trends, aimed at integrating higher levels of circuit
functionality are tightly related to an emphasis on compactness in
consumer electronic products and a widespread growth and interest in
wireless communications and products. These trends are expected to
persist for some time as technology and design methodologies continue to
evolve and the era of Systems on a Chip has definitely come of age.
While technology improvements and spiraling silicon capacity allow
designers to pack more functions onto a single piece of silicon, they
also highlight a pressing challenge for system designers to keep up with
such amazing complexity. To handle higher operating speeds and the
constraints of portability and connectivity, new circuit techniques have
appeared. Intensive research and progress in EDA tools, design
methodologies and techniques is required to empower designers with the
ability to make efficient use of the potential offered by this
increasing silicon capacity and complexity and to enable them to design,
test, verify and build such systems.