UNIT I.

FUNDAMENTAL OF EMBEDDED SYSTEM DESIGN

For any problem direct contact to Dr. Vijay Nath VLSI Design Group, Dept. of ECE, BIT Mesra, Ranchi-835215 Mob. 09304560582. E-vijaynath@bitmesra.ac.in Module 1: Introduction to Embedded Systems: Embedded system overview, design challenge, common design metrics, time-to-market design metric, NRE and unit cost design metrics, performance design metric, processor technology, general purpose processors software and hardware, application specific processors, IC technology, semi-custom ASIC. (7) Text Book: Embedded System Design A Unified HW.SW Introduction, Vahid Gfrank and Givargis Tony, John Wiley & Sons, 2002. Chapter 1 (1.1-1.4) INTRODUCTION TO EMBEDDED SYSTEMS Definition:- 1- A such type of electronic computing system that perform a single job at a time, is known as Embedded System. 2- An embedded system is nearly any computing system other a desktop computer. 3- Embedded system are found in a variety of common electronic devices, such as consumer electronics (all phones, pagers, digital cameras, camcorders, video cassette recorders, portable video games, calculators, and personal digital assistants), home appliances ( microwave ovens, answering machines, thermostats, home security systems, washing machines, and lighting systems), office automation ( fax machine, copiers, printers and scanners) business equipment (cash registers, curbside check-in, alarm systems, card readers, product scanners, and automated teller machines), and automobiles ( transmissions control, cruise control, fuel injection, antilock brakes, and active suspension) LIST OF EMBEDDED SYSTEM:Anti-lock brakes Auto focus cameras Automatic teller machines Automatic toll systems Automatic transmission Avionic systems cordless phones cruise control curbside check in system digital cameras pixel drives electronic card readers

Battery systems Camcorders All phones Cell phone base stations Fingerprint identifiers Home security systems Life- support systems Medical testing systems Modems MPEG decoders Network cards Network switches/routers On board navigation Pagers Photo copiers Point to sale systems Portable video games Printers Satellite phones Scanners Smart over/dishwashers Speech recognized Stereo systems Tele conferencing system Tele visions Temperature controllers Theft tracking systems TV set top boxes VCRs DVD players Video games consoles Video phones Washers and dryers

electronic instruments electronic toys/ games factory control fax machines

One might say that nearly any device that runs on electricity either already has or will soon have a computing system embedded within it. Although embedded computers typically cost for less than desktop computers, their quantities are huge. In 1999 a typical American household may have had one desktop computer, but each one had been 35 and 50 embedded computers, with that number expected to rise to nearly 300 by 2004. further more, the average 1993 car had 50 embedded computers, casting several hundred dollars in all with an annual cost growth rate of 17% several billion embedded microprocessor units were sold annually in recent years, compared to a few hundred million desktop up units.

EMBEDDED SYSTEMS COMMON CHARCTERISTICS:-

1. SINGLE FUNCTIONED:- an embedded system usually executes a specific program repeatedly. e,g, a pager is always a pager. In contrast a desktop system executes a variety of programs, Like spread sheets , ward processors, and video games, with new programs added frequently. One case is where an embedded systems program is updated with a newer program version, for example, some cell phones can be updated in such a manner. A second case is where several programs are swapped in and out of a system due to size limitations. For example, some missiles run one program while in cruise mode, then load a second program for looking onto a target, never the less, we can see that even these exception represent system with a specific function. 2. TIGHTLY CONSTRAINED:All computing systems have constraints on design metrics, but those on embedded systems can be especially tight. A design metric is a measure of an implementations features, such as cost, size performance, and power. 3. REACTIVE AND REAL TIME:Many embedded systems must continually react to charges in the systems environment and must compute certain results in real time without delay. For example, consider the digital camera chip shown in Figure (1). The charge coupled device (CCD) contains an array of light sensitive photocells that capture an image. The ALD DZA circuit convert analog images to digital and digital to analog , respectively.

Figure 1: An embedded system a Digital Camera The CCD preprocessor provides commands to the CCD to read the image. The JPEG codec compressors and decompresses an image using the JPEG compression standard, enabling compact storage of images in the limited memory of the camera. The pixel coprocessor aids in rapidly displaying images. The memory controller controls access to a memory chip also found in the camera. While the DMA controller enable direct memory access by other devices while the microcontroller is performing other functions. The UART enables communication with a PCLs serial port for uploading video frames, while the connection with a pcs ISA bus. The LCD control and display control circuits control the display of images on the cameras liquid crystal display device. The multiplier/ accumulator circuit performs a particular frequently executed multiply/ accumulate computation faster than the microcontroller, which is a programmable processor that control the activities of all the other circuits. We can study of each device as a processor designed for a particular task, while the microcontroller is a more general processor designed for general tasks. This example illustrates some of the embedded system characteristics described. First, it performs a single function repeatedly. The system always acts as a digital camera, wherein it captures, compresses, and stores frames, decompresses and display frames, and uploads frames.

Second, it is tightly constrained. The system must be low cost since consumers must be able to afford such a camera. It must be small so that it fits within a standard sized camera. It must be fast so that it can process numerous images in milliseconds. It must consume little power so that the cameras battery will last a long time. However, this particular system does not passes a high degree of the characteristic of being reactive and real time, as it responds only to the pressing of buttons by a user, which even in the case of an avid photographer, is still quite slow with respect to processor speeds. DESIGN CHALLENGE OPTIMIZING DESIGN METRICS There are several design metrics:-

Figure 2 Design Metrics Completion-improving one may worsen other COMMON DESIGN METRIC:For our purposes, an implementation consists either of microprocessor with an accompanying program, a connection of digital gates, or some combination there of. A design metric is a measurable feature of a systems implementation. e.g.

JPEG: It is short for joint photographic experts group. joint refers to the groups status as a committee working on both ISO and ITU-T standards. Their best known standard is for still image compression. NRE COST (nonrecurring engineering cost): The one time momentary cost of designing the system. Once the system is designed, any number of units can be manufactured without incurring any additional design cost; hence it is known as nonrecurring. UNIT COST: The momentary cost of manufacturing each copy of the system, excluding NRE cost. SIZE:The physical space required by the system, which may determine the lifetime of a battery or the coding requirements of the IC, since more power means more heat. FLEXIBILITY:The ability to change the functionality of the system, which may be bigger or more expensive than the final system implementation, but it can be used to verify the systems usefulness and correctness and to refine the systems functionality. TIME TO MARKET:The time required to develop a system to the point that it can be releard and sold to consumers. The main contributors are design time, manufacturing time. MAINTAIN ABILUTY:The ability to modify the system after its initial release, especially as designers who did not originally design the system. CORRECTNESS:Our confidence that we have implemented the systems functionality correctly. We can check the functionality throughout the process of designing the systems and we can insert test circuitry to check that manufacturing was correct. SAFETY:The probability that the system will not cause harm. THE TIME TO MARKET DESIGN METRIC:Most of these metrics are heavily constrained in an embedded system. The time to market constraint has become especially demanding in recent years. Introducing an embedded

Figure: 3: Time to market design metric system to the market place early can make a big difference in the system profitability, since market windows for products are becoming quite short, with such. Windows after measured in months. THE NRE AND UNIT COST DESIGN METRICE:Let us consider NRE cost and unit cost is given in details, suppose three technologies are available for use in a particular product. Assume that implementing the product using technology A would result in an NRE cost of $2000 and unit cost of $ 100, that technology B would have an NRE cost of $30000 and unit cost of $30, and that technology C would have an NRE cost of $ 100,000 and unit cost of $2. Ignoring all other design metrics, like time to market, the best technology choice will depend on the number of units we plan to produce. We illustrate this concept with the plot of fig(2). For each of the three technologies, we plot total cost verses the number of units produced. Total cost = NRE cost + unit cost * # of units Where, A yields the lowest total cost for low volumes, 1 and 400. B yields the lowest total cost for volumes between 400 and 2500. C yields the lowest cost for volumes above 2500. Pre product cost = total cost/ # of units = NRE cost/ # of units + units cost

THE PERFORMANCE DESIGN METRIC:Performance of a system is a measure how long the system takes to execute our designed tasks. Latency, or response time :- the time between the start of the tasks execution and the end. e.g processing an image may take 0.25 sec. THROUGHPUT:The number of tasks that can be processed per unit time, for example, a camera may be able to process 4 images per second. SPEEDUP:This is a common method of comparing the performance of two systems. The speedup of system A over system B is determined.

Speedup of A of B = performance of A Performance of B Performance could be measured either as latency or as throughput, depending on what is of interest. Suppose the speedup of camera A over camera B is 2. then we also say that A is 2 times faster than B. and B is 2 times slowest than A.

1.3 PROCESSOR TECHNOLOGY:Processor technology relates to the architecture of the computation engine used to implement a systems desired functionality. Although the term processor is usually associated with programmable software processors we can think of many other, non programmable, digital system as being processor also. GENERAL PURPOSE PROCESSOR SOFTWARE:A designer of a general purpose processor, or microprocessor builds a programmable device that is suitable for a variety of applications to maximize the number of device sold. 1- Such a processor is a program memory the designer of such a processor does not know what program will run an the processor, so the program cannot be built into digital circuit. 2- General datapath the datapath must be general enough to handle a variety of computations, so such a datapath typically has a large register file and one or more general purpose arithmetic logic units (ALUs).

total = 0 for i = 1 to n loop total + = p4[i] end loop.

Figure(4) illustrates that a general purpose processor covers the desired functionality but not necessarily efficiently.

SINGLE HARDWARE

PURPOSE

PROCESSORS

Figure 4: General purpose processor. APPLICATION - SPECIFIC PROCESSORS:ASIP can serve as a compromise between the other processor options. An ASIP is a programmable processor optimized for a particular class of applications having common characteristics, such as embedded control, digital signal processing, or telecommunications.

MICROCONTROLLERS AND DIGITAL SIGNAL PROCESSORS: These are two code known types of ASIPs that have been used for several decades. A micro controller is a microprocessor that has been optimized for embedded control applications. Such applications typically monitor and set numerous single bit control but not perform large amounts of data computations.

Digital signal processors (DSPs) are another common type of ASIP, A DSP is a microprocessor designed to perform common operations on digital signals, which are the digital encodings of analog signals like video and audio. 1.4 IC TECHNOLOGY:IC technology involves the manner in which we map a digital (gate level) implementation on to an IC. An IC often called a chip is a semiconductor device consisting of a set of connected transistors and other device. - Full custom/VLSI - Semi custom ASIC (gate array and standard cell) - PLD - Trends. FULL CUSTOM/ VLSI:In a full custom IC technology, we optimize all layers for a particular embedded systems digital signal transmissions and routing wires among the transistors. Once we complete all the makes, we send the mask specifications to a fabrication plant that buikds the actual ICs. Full custom IC design, often reffered to as very high NRE cost and long turnaround times, typically may montas before the IC becomes available, but can yield excellent performance with small size and power. SEMI CUSTOM ASIC (GATE ARRAY AND STANDARD CELL):In an applications specific IC (ASIC) technology, the lower layers are fully or partially built, leaving us to finish the upper layers. In a gate- array ASIC technology, the masks for the transistor and gate levels are already built ( i.e. the IC already consists of arrays of gates). The remaining task is to connect these gates to achieve our particular implementation. In a standard all ASIC technology, logic- level cells, such as an AND gate or an AND-OR-INVERT combination, the mask portions are predesigned usually by hand. ASICs are by for the most popular IC technology as they provide for good performance and size with much us NRE cost than full-custom ICs.

Figure 5: Design Technology Chart PLD:In a programmable logic device (PLD) technology all layers already exist, so we can purchase the actual IC before finishing our design. The programming that takes place may consist of creating or destroying connections between wires that connect gates, either by blowing a fuse, or setting a bit in a programmable switch. Small devices called programmers, connected to a desktop computer, typically perform such programming. 1- PLA :- which consists of a programmable array of AND gates and a programmable array of OR gates. 2- PAL- which uses just one programmable array to reduce the number of expansive programmable components e.g FPGA. TRENDS:IC transistor capacity has doubled roughly every 18 months for the past several decades. This trend, illustrate in fig (1.2) was actually predicted way back in 1965 by Intel co-founder Gordon modre. Double every 18 to 24 month. This trends is known as moores law. Another trend the minimum part size, commonly known as feature size, for a CMOS IC in 2002 is about 130 nm.

Figure 6: I C capacity exponential increase. Moores law source: (International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductor Devices)