VLSI System Design

The integrated circuit market is still booming, with double-digit global growth in 2017, as reported by the WSTS (Word Semiconductor Trade Statistics) committee. This market is driven by fast-growing application fields such as big data, generally managed by data centers, but also the Internet of Things (IoT), and cloud computing. Objectives have also changed in recent years to meet societal challenges, particularly environmental ones, by reducing the energy consumption of integrated circuits and systems, but always by seeking performance while optimizing cost. We now speak of efficiency, which can be translated as effectiveness at lower cost.

In this context, certain types of system, whether integrated on a single chip or not, are in high demand. Embedded, embedded and mobile systems are hidden and behave like real (invisible) computers [H 8 000] . They generally contain one or more processors, numerous peripherals (coprocessors for processing assistance, input/output management, communication management), memory elements, and components dedicated to intensive processing, such as graphics processors (GPUs for "Graphics Processing Unit") or reconfigurable FPGAs (for "Field Programmable Gate Array"). Such processing power brings us closer to the realm of high-performance computing, with architectures incorporating numerous processors: 72 processors for the Tile-Gx72, 256 processors for Kalray's MMPA and 3,584 cores for Nvidia's Tesla P100. Such systems are built with tens of billions of transistors.

Automatic system design tools have evolved to make it possible to integrate these billions of transistors on a single circuit. Since the 1980s, design tools and methods have moved towards higher levels of abstraction.

These new methods are based on techniques and tools widely used in circuit design, and enable system designers to focus on architecture and technology choices. The final design steps are then carried out by automatic tools.

This article reviews the methods and techniques used to design digital systems and circuits, from system specification to obtaining the masks needed to physically implement the circuit.

The first section presents the methods, models and languages used in the various stages of system design. A classic design flow is then presented. Certain stages of embedded system design, notably behavioral synthesis, then logical and physical synthesis, are detailed....