Background

Abstract

This chapter reviews the background required for this monograph. First, common ASIC design approaches are introduced. Advantages and limitations of ASICs with regard to general-purpose DSP processors are outlined. Section 2.2 describes popular design approaches and environments proposed in recent literature to synthesize ASICs form HDL descriptions. In section 2.3, a comparison between existing ASIC design tools is proposed based on criteria such as — design turnaround, flexibility, ease-of-use, and performance. Section 2.4 introduces a cost model originally proposed by Synopsys and Xilinx that compares the ASIC and FPGA alternatives. This cost model and assumptions made will serve us later, when we compare our proposed design methodology with other high-level approaches.