SoC Environment (SCE)


Introduction
Tutorial
Download
Contact
Copyright
Introduction

The SoC Environment (SCE) is an implementation of the concept of the exploration engine as a step in our overall SoC design flow research.


SCE Screen Shot


The SCE provides a environment for modeling, synthesis and validation. It includes a graphical user interface (GUI) and a set of tools to facilitate the design flow and perform refinement steps. The two major components of the GUI are the Refinement User Interface (RUI) and the Validation User Interface (VUI). The RUI allows designers to make and input design decisions, such as component allocation, specification mapping. With design decisions made, refinement tools can be invoked inside RUI to refine models. The VUI allows the simulation of all models to validate the design at each stage of the design flow.

A profiling tool is used to obtain the characteristics of the initial specification, which serves as the basis for architecture exploration. The refinement tool set automatically transforms models based on relevant design decisions. An estimation tool set produces quality metrics for each intermediate models, which can be evaluated by designers.

With the assistance of the GUI and tool set, it is relatively easy for designer to step through the design process. With the editing, browsing and algorithm selection capability provided by the RUI, a specification model can be efficiently captured by designers. Based on the information profiled on the specification, designers input architectural decisions and apply the architecture refinement tool to derive the architecture model. If the estimated metrics are satisfactory, designers can focus on communication issues, such as protocol selection and channel partitioning. With communication decisions made, the communication refinement tool is used to generate the communication model. Finally, the implementation model is produced in the similar fashion, ready to feed into traditional design flows.


Tutorial

A tutorial of the SoC Environment (SCE) is available for download. Based on a real-life design example, the tutorial shows step by step how a design is taken from initial specification down to an implementation using the SCE tool set.

The tutorial document together with a demo version of SCE required to run the tutorial is distributed on a CD-ROM (see below). Otherwise, the tutorial document itself can be dowloaded directly from here:


Download

A demo version of our current SCE prototype is available upon request. The SCE demo comes on a CD-ROM and includes the tutorial document (see above).

If you are interested in obtaining a demo version of the SoC Environment (SCE) on CD-ROM, please contact us and we will provide you with a CD-ROM together with the tutorial document.

System requirements:

  • PC or laptop, x86 CPU, 128MB RAM, CD-ROM drive.
  • The CD-ROM contains a bootable live installation of RedHat 7.3 which requires the PC to be able to boot from CD.
  • Otherwise, a RedHat 7.3 Linux installation (other Linux distributions are not tested, i.e. they may or may not work) to run directly from CD or from hard disk (copying to hard disk requires appr. 80MB of disk space).


Contact
Andreas Gerstlauer
Center for Embedded Computer Systems
University of California, Irvine
Irvine, CA 92697-3425
U.S.A.
Email: gerstl@cecs.uci.edu
WWW: http://www.cecs.uci.edu/~cad
Phone: +1 (949) 824-4922
Fax: +1 (949) 824-4789

Copyright

The SoC environment (SCE) is
Copyright © 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003
Center for Embedded Computer Systems
University of California, Irvine
Irvine, USA


09/18/03 A. Gerstlauer (gerstl@cecs.uci.edu).