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2 Design metrics & Embedded processor Technology

The document outlines various design metrics for systems, including unit cost, NRE cost, size, performance, power, flexibility, time-to-market, time-to-prototype, correctness, and safety. It discusses different types of processors such as general-purpose processors (GPP), single-purpose processors (SPP), and application-specific instruction set processors (ASIP), highlighting their benefits and drawbacks. The document emphasizes the trade-offs between flexibility, performance, and cost in the design of embedded systems.

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pandromianarmour47
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2 views

2 Design metrics & Embedded processor Technology

The document outlines various design metrics for systems, including unit cost, NRE cost, size, performance, power, flexibility, time-to-market, time-to-prototype, correctness, and safety. It discusses different types of processors such as general-purpose processors (GPP), single-purpose processors (SPP), and application-specific instruction set processors (ASIP), highlighting their benefits and drawbacks. The document emphasizes the trade-offs between flexibility, performance, and cost in the design of embedded systems.

Uploaded by

pandromianarmour47
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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DESIGN METRICS

A design metric is a measurable feature of a system’s implementation.

• Unit cost: the monetary cost of manufacturing each copy of the system, excluding
NRE cost.

• NRE cost (Non-Recurring Engineering cost): The monetary cost of designing the
system. Once the system is designed, any number of units can be manufactured
without incurring any additional design cost (hence the term “non-recurring”).

• Size: the physical space required by the system, often measured in bytes for software,
and gates or transistors for hardware.

• Performance: the execution time or throughput of the system.

• Power: the amount of power consumed by the system, which determines the lifetime of a
battery, or the cooling requirements of the IC, since more power means more heat.
• Flexibility: the ability to change the functionality of the system without incurring
heavy NRE cost. Software is typically considered very flexible.

• Time-to-market: The amount of time required to design and manufacture the


system to the point the system can be sold to customers.

• Time-to-prototype: The amount of time to build a working version of the system,


which may be bigger or more expensive than the final system implementation but
can be used to verify the system’s usefulness and correctness and to refine the
system's functionality.

• Correctness: our confidence that we have implemented the system’s functionality


correctly. We can check the functionality throughout the process of designing the
system, and we can insert test circuitry to check that manufacturing was correct.

• Safety: the probability that the system will not cause harm.
Embedded processor
• Processor technology involves the architecture of the
computation engine used to implement a system’s desired
functionality.

• While the term “processor” is usually associated with


programmable software processors, we can think of many other,
nonprogrammable, digital systems as being processors also.
The CCD preprocessor is a charge-coupled
device preprocessor.
The JPEG codec compresses and
decompresses an image.
The Pixel coprocessor aids in
rapidly displaying images.
The Memory controller controls access to a
memory chip.
DMA controller enables direct memory
access without requiring the use of the
microcontroller.
The UART enables communication with a
PC’s serial port for uploading video frames,
The ISA bus interface enables a faster
connection with a PC’s ISA bus.
The LCD ctrl and Display ctrl circuits
control the display of images on the
camera’s liquid-crystal display device.
A Multiplier/Accum circuit assists with
certain digital signal processing.
At the heart of the system is a
microcontroller, which is a processor that
controls the activities of all the other
1. General-purpose processors -- software
• The designer of a general-purpose processor builds a device
suitable for a variety of applications, to maximize the number of
devices sold. One feature of such a processor is a program
memory – the designer does not know what program will run on
the processor, so cannot build the program into the digital circuit.

• An embedded system designer simply uses a general-purpose


processor, by programming the processor’s memory to carry out
the required functionality. Hence implementation is referred as
“software”.
Design metric benefits of GPP
• Design time and NRE cost are low, because the designer must
only write a program, but need not do any digital design.

• Flexibility is high, because changing functionality requires only


changing the program.

• Unit cost may be relatively low in small quantities, since the


processor manufacturer sells large quantities to other customers
and hence distributes the NRE cost over many units.

• Performance may be fast for computation-intensive applications,


Design metric drawbacks of GPP
• Unit cost may be too high for large quantities.

• Performance may be slow for certain applications.

• Size and power may be large due to unnecessary processor


hardware.
Implementation example
Array summer implementation using GPP
• GPP covers the desired functionality, but not
necessarily efficiently.

• The functionality is stored in a program memory.

• The controller fetches the current instruction, as


indicated by the program counter (PC), into the
instruction register (IR).

• It then configures the datapath for this instruction


and executes the instruction.

• Finally, it determines the appropriate next


instruction address, sets the PC to this address and
fetches again.
Single-purpose processors -- hardware
• A single-purpose processor is a digital circuit designed to execute
exactly one program.

• An embedded system designer creates a single-purpose


processor by designing a custom digital circuit- the
implementation simply CALLED as the “hardware”.

• Other common terms include coprocessor and accelerator.


Benefits and drawbacks of SPP
• Performance may be fast.

• Size and power may be small.

• Unit-cost may be low for large quantities.

• Design time and NRE costs may be high.

• Flexibility is low.

• Unit cost may be high for small quantities.


Array summer implementation using SPP
• Since the example counts from one to N, we add an index
register.

• The index register will be loaded with N and will then count
down to zero.

• It will assert a status line when N becomes zero which is


read by the controller.

• Since the example has only one value, we add only one
register labeled total to the datapath.

• Since the example’s only arithmetic operation is addition, we


add a single adder to the datapath.

• Since the processor only executes this one program, we


hardwire the program directly
into the control logic.
Application-specific processors
• An ASIP is designed for a particular class of applications with
common characteristics, such as digital-signal processing,
telecommunications, embedded control, etc.

• The designer of such a processor can optimize the datapath for


the application class, perhaps adding special functional units for
common operations and eliminating other infrequently used units.
Merits and demerits of ASIP(Application
Specific Instruction set Processor)
• ASIP provide the benefit of flexibility while still achieving good
performance, power and size.

• However, such processors can require large NRE cost to build the
processor itself, and to build a compiler, if these items don’t
already exist.

• Much research currently focuses on automatically generating


such processors and associated retargetable compilers.
Architecture of ASIP
• Digital-signal processors (DSPs) are a common class of ASIP.

• A DSP is a processor designed to perform common operations on


digital signals-

• which are the digital encodings of analog signals like video and
audio.
• These operations carry out common signal processing tasks like
signal filtering, transformation, or combination.
• Such operations are usually math-intensive, including operations
like multiply and add or shift and add.
• To support such operations, a DSP may have special- purpose
datapath components such a multiply-accumulate unit, which
can perform a computation like T = T + M[i]*k using only one
instruction.

• Because DSP programs often manipulate large arrays of data, a


DSP may also include special hardware to fetch sequential data
memory locations in parallel with other operations, to further
speed execution.

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