• IEIE Transactions on Smart Processing and Computing
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.55-62
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• 2016

In this paper, we propose a hybrid multi.system-on-chip (H-MSoC) architecture that provides a high-flexibility system in a rapid development time. The H-MSoC approach provides a flexible system-on-chip (SoC) architecture that is easy to configure for physical- and application-layer development. The physical- and application-layer aspects are dynamically designed and modified; hence, it is important to consider a design methodology that supports rapid SoC development. Physical layer development refers to intellectual property cores or other modular hardware (HW) development, while application layer development refers to user interface or application software (SW) development. H-MSoC is built from multi-SoC architectures in which each SoC is localized and specified based on its development focus, either physical or application (hybrid). Physical HW development SoC is referred to as physical-SoC (Phy-SoC) and application SW development SoC is referred to as application-SoC (App-SoC). Phy-SoC and App-SoC are connected to each other via Ethernet. Ethernet was chosen because of its flexibility, high speed, and easy configuration. For prototyping, we used a LEON3 SoC as the Phy-SoC and a ZYNQ-7000 SoC as the App-SoC. The proposed design was proven in real-time tests and achieved good performance.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.58 no.10
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• pp.2059-2063
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• 2009

This paper presents a programmable System-On-a-chip (SoC) for various embedded smart applications that need Neural Network computations. The system is fully implemented into a prototyping platform based on Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA). The SoC consists of an embedded processor core and a reconfigurable hardware accelerator for neural computations. The performance of the SoC is evaluated using a real image processing application, an optical character recognition (OCR) system.

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.255-261
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• 2005

With the advent of sub-90nm technologies, the system-on-chip (SoC) and system-in-package (SiP) are becoming the trend in delivering low-cost, low-power, and small-form-factor consumer electronic systems running at multiple GHz. The shortened transistor channel length reduces the transistor switching cycles to the range of several picoseconds, yet the time-of-flights of the critical on-chip and off-chip interconnects are in the range of 10 picoseconds for 1.5mm-long wires and 100 picoseconds for 15mm-long wires. Designers realize the bottleneck today often lies at chip-to-chip interconnects and the industry needs a good model to compute the inductance in these parts of circuits. In this paper we propose a new method for extracting accurate equivalent inductance circuit models for SPICE-level circuit simulations of system-on-chip (SoC) and system-in-package (SiP) designs. In our method, geometrical meshes are created and numerical methods are used to find the solutions for the electromagnetic fields over the fine meshes. In this way, multiple-GHz SoC and SiP designers can use accurate inductance modeling and interconnect optimization to achieve high yields.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.34 no.8C
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• pp.806-813
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• 2009

This paper presents a modem chip design for high-speed wireless communications. Among the high-speed communication technologies, we design the UWB (Ultra-Wideband) modem SoC (System-on-Chip) Chip based on a MB-OFDM scheme which uses wide frequency band and gives low frequency interference to other communication services. The baseband system of the modem SoC chip is designed according to the standard document published by WiMedia. The SoC chip consists of FFT/IFFT (Fast Fourier Transform/Inverse Fast Fourier Transform), transmitter, receiver, symbol synchronizer, frequency offset estimator, Viterbi decoder, and other receiving parts. The chip is designed using 90nm CMOS (Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor) procedure. The chip size is about 5mm x 5mm and was fab-out in July 20th, 2009.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SD
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• v.42 no.2 s.332
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• pp.65-72
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• 2005

We can integrate more IP blocks on a silicon die as the development of fabrication technologies and EDA tools. Consequently, we can design complicated SoC architecture including multi-processors. However, most of existing SoC buses have bottleneck in on-chip communication because of shared bus architectures, which result in the performance degradation of systems. In most cases, the performance of a multi-processor system is determined by efficient on-chip communication and the well-balanced distribution of computation rather than the performance of the processors. We propose an efficient SoC Network Architecture(SNA) using crossbar routers which provide a solution to ensure enough communication bandwidth. The SNA can significantly reduce the bottleneck of on-chip communication by providing multi-channels for multi-masters. According to the proposed architecture, we design a model system for the SNA. The proposed architecture has a better efficiency by $40\%$ than the AMBA AHB according to a simulation result.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.27 no.5
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• pp.497-503
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• 2005

In this paper, we present a performance analysis for an MPEG-4 video codec based on the on-chip network communication architecture. The existing on-chip buses of system-on-a-chip (SoC) have some limitation on data traffic bandwidth since a large number of silicon IPs share the bus. An on-chip network is introduced to solve the problem of on-chip buses, in which the concept of a computer network is applied to the communication architecture of SoC. We compared the performance of the MPEG-4 video codec based on the on-chip network and Advanced Micro-controller Bus Architecture (AMBA) on-chip bus. Experimental results show that the performance of the MPEG-4 video codec based on the on-chip network is improved over 50% compared to the design based on a multi-layer AMBA bus.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.58 no.7
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• pp.1418-1423
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• 2009

This paper describes the design and implementation of a System-on-a-Chip (SoC) for image processing applications to use in wearable/mobile products. The target Soc consists of LEON 2 core, AMBA/APB bus-systems and custom-designed controllers. A new FPGA-based prototyping platform is implemented and used for design and verification of the target SoC. To ensure that the implemented SoC satisfies the required performances, an image processing application is performed.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.696-706
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• 2007

Multiprocessor system on chip (MPSoC) platform has set a new innovative trend for the System on Chip (SoC) design. With the rapidly approaching billion transistors era, some of the main problem in deep sub-micron technologies characterized by gate lengths in the range of 60-90 nm will arise from non scalable wire delays, errors in signal integrity and un-synchronized communication. These problems may be addressed by the use of Network on Chip (NOC) architecture for future SoC. Most future SoCs will use network architecture and a packet based communication protocol for on chip communication. This paper presents an adaptive wormhole routing with proactive turn prohibition to guarantee deadlock free on chip communication for NOC architecture. It shows a simple muting architecture with five full-duplex, flit-wide communication channels. We provide simulation results for message latency and compare results with those of dimension ordered techniques operating at the same link rates.

• Proceedings of the Korean Information Science Society Conference
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• 2003.04d
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• pp.286-288
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• 2003

본 논문에서는 서로 다른 네트워크간의 다양한 프로토콜과 이종의 트래픽을 동시에 처리할 수 있는 네트워크용 SoC (System-on-a-Chip) 프로세서를 구현하였다. 제작된 네트워크 SoC 프로세서는 ARM 프로세서 코어와 ATM(Asynchronous Transfer Mode) 블록, 10/100 Mbps 이더넷 볼록, 스케쥴러, UART 등을 이용하였고 각 블록은 AM8A (Advanced Microcontroller Bus Architecture) 버스로 연결하였다. SoC 프로세서는 CADENCE사의 VerilogHDL을 이용하여 설계하였고 0.35$\mu\textrm{m}$ 셀 라이브러리를 이용하여 검증하였다. 구현된 칩은 총 게이트수가 312,000개이며 칠의 최대 동작 주파수는 50MHz 이다.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SD
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• v.47 no.1
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• pp.86-93
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• 2010

A system-on-chip (SoC) includes more functions and requires rapidly increased data bandwidth as the development of semiconductor process technology and SoC design methodology. As a result, the data bandwidth of on-chip-networks in SoCs becomes a key factor of the system performance, and the research on the on-chip-network is performed actively. Either AXI or OCP is considered to a substitute of the AHB which has been the most popular on-chip-network. However, they have much increased number of signal wires, which make it difficult to design the interface logic and the network hardware. The compatibility of the protocols with other protocols is not so good. In this paper, we propose a new interface protocol for on-chip-networks to improve the problems mentioned above. The proposed protocol uses less number of signal wires than that of the AHB and considers the compatibility with other interface protocols such as the AXI. According the analysis results, the performance of the proposed protocol per wire is much better than that of the AXI although the absolute performance is slightly inferior.