FPGA based Digital World
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The basic idea of introducing SoC into electric devices is to integrate more components into the same piece of silicon to reduce size and cost while enhancing performance. |
From MPU to SoC
A system-on-a-chip (SoC) is a microchip with all the necessary electronic circuits and parts for a given system, such as a smartphone or wearable computer, on a single integrated circuit (IC).
And in Wikipedia, it¡¯s defined as below.
System on a chip or system on chip (SoC or SOC) is an integrated circuit (IC) that integrates all components of a computer or other electronic system into a single chip. It may contain digital, analog, mixed-signal, and often radio-frequency functions¡ªall on a single chip substrate. SoCs are very common in the mobile electronics market because of their low power consumption. A typical application is in the area of embedded systems.
And (Mohanad Shini) extended this SoC concept from a chip to a whole system, including the SoC hardware (HW), the software(SW) running on it and the integration. So in this concept, a SoC includes below parts:
- SoC Chip
includes embedded processor, ASIC logics and analog circuitry, embedded memory
- SoC Software
includes OS, compiler, simulator, firmware, driver, protocol stackIntegrated development environment (debugger, linker, ICE), application interface (C/C++, assembly)
- SoC Integration
includes the whole system solution, manufacture consultant and technical Supporting
But it¡¯s only for reference, and this extension is not commonly accepted yet.
The basic idea behind the SoC is to integrate more components into the same piece of silicon to reduce size and cost while enhancing performance, below picture depicts the evolution from CPU to SoC and MCM.
The concepts involved are depicted below.
CPU: Central Processing Unit
* central component of a MPU
* includes ALU and the control unit
* determines the instruction set
MPU: Microprocessor
* General purposes processor
* Minimal "extras" on-chip
* Example: x86
MCU: Microcontroller
* Control oriented: self-sufficiency and cost-effectiveness
* Computer-on-a-chip:
Processor + Peripherals(flash,SRAM,timer, etc.)
* Example: 8051, S3C2410
SoC: System on Chip
* More powerful computing: e.g., Cortex-A series
* More application-specific functions: e.g., 5G SoC
* highly-integrated
The benefits of SoC comparing with MPU are:
- Compact
Similar size with more functions
- Decreased power consumption
High level of integration and much shorter wiring
- Cheaper
Less peripherals outside
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| SoC |
| From MPU to SoC |
| SoC in Embedded System |
| SoC Architecture |
| MCU SoC |
| MCU SoC-ARM and RISC-V |
| MCU SoC-Vendors |
| MCU SoC-Examples |
| SoC FPGA |
| SoC in the future |
| ARM |
| What is ARM |
| Architecture |
| Example Structure |
| Instructions |
| Cross Development System |
| A Starting Example |
| Operating System |
| UI System |