Fundamentals of SoCs

This course provides an introduction to special types of integrated circuits ("silicon chips") called System-on-Chip (SoC) devices. These custom, application specific ICs (ASICs) include one or more microprocessor cores and on-chip memory along with peripheral devices and special hardware functions. The course will start with a brief history of ASICs and a comparison of gate arrays vs. structured ASICs vs. standard cell devices and full custom components, right through to mixed-signal SoCs, design tools and flows and design for manufacturing, low-power design techniques and the use of FPGAs for prototyping. There are no prerequisites and the intended audience is engineers and project managers who need to design SoCs; especially those who are new to the field or who need to refresh their knowledge.