The Universal Micro System Hardware Performance with Software Convenience

Abstract

The demands of digital image processing, communications and multimedia applications are

growing more rapidly than traditional design methods can fulfil them. Previously, only custom

hardware designs could provide the performance required to meet the demands of these

applications. However, hardware design has reached a crisis point. Hardware design can no longer

deliver a product with the required performance and cost in a reasonable time for a reasonable risk.

Software based designs running on conventional processors can deliver working designs in a

reasonable time and with low risk but cannot meet the performance requirements. Cradle

Technologies offers the Universal Micro System (UMS) as a solution to these problems The UMS

is a completely programmable (including I/O) system on a chip that combines hardware

performance with the fast time to market, low cost and low risk of software designs.

Today’s Challenge

Digital image processing, communications and multimedia applications are growing at an

explosive rate and are creating ever-increasing demands for computation and data management in

the systems that implement them. The performance demands of these applications are too high to

be met by conventional RISC or DSP processors. They have traditionally been met by custom

designed silicon in the form of Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) and Application

Specific Standard Products (ASSPs).

Customers and vendors design ASICs and ASSPs to provide the necessary system performance for

the current generation of silicon processes. Each new generation of silicon (e.g. going to 0.25

micron from 0.35 micron) requires a new round of ASIC and ASSP design. New designs are

required because each new generation of silicon has the potential of increased performance and

functionality for the same cost when compared to the previous generation.

Unfortunately, the ASIC and ASSP approach to high performance system design has been unable

to keep up with the continual demands of process improvement. Each round of process

improvement provides the capability of more transistors in a new product for the same cost as the

previous product. With more transistors, the new product requires more design time and effort than

the previous product. Improving design tools can help to reduce the effort. However even with

improvements in tools, there is a problem. Process capability in transistors per unit area has been

improving at over 50% per year, while design capability in transistors per designer per year has

been improving at less than 30% per year. If the designer population does not grow rapidly and

continually (and it has not), fewer designs per year can be implemented resulting in unmet demand.

Potentially successful products are not created because there is not enough talent available to make

them.

Copyright © 1999 Cradle Technologies, Inc. All rights Reserved. UMS and Multi Stream Processor are trademarks of Cradle

Technologies, Inc. All other trademarks or brand names mentioned herein are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective

holders. Printed in the U.S.A

UMS White Paper

Bigger designs bring other problems. It takes more designers to create the design, the design takes

significantly longer to create and debug, and you have increased the risk of missing the market

window. A related problem is that product cycles are getting shorter. With the design taking longer

and product cycles getting shorter, the market can change and invalidate your product before you

finish the design.

The problem with ASIC and ASSP design is that it is hardware design. Hardware design is

relatively difficult, time consuming, inflexible and specialized relative to software design.

Hardware designs are also not very reusable when compared to software designs. Significant

design effort is often required to transfer a hardware design from the current process generation to

a new generation.

What is needed is a system approach that combines the high performance associated with hardware

with the short design time, flexibility and reusability of software. A new architecture called the

Universal Micro System (UMS) fills this need and fills it in a way that provides major advantages

over all other approaches that have been tried. The UMS provides the performance of hardware

designs with the rapid design time of software designs. Figure 1 shows the UMS relative to other

approaches in terms of system performance and design performance measured in designs per year.