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Rethinking Digital Design: Why Design Must Change
November/December 2010 (vol. 30 no. 6)
pp. 9-24
ASCII Text
x 
 
Ofer Shacham, Omid Azizi, Megan Wachs, Wajahat Qadeer, Zain Asgar, Kyle Keley, John P. Stevenson, Stephen Richardson, Mark Horowitz, Benjamin Lee, Alex Solomatnikov, Amin Firoozshahian, "Rethinking Digital Design: Why Design Must Change," IEEE Micro, vol. 30, no. 6, pp. 9-24, November/December, 2010.
 
 
BibTex
x
 
@article{ 10.1109/MM.2010.81,
author = {Ofer Shacham and Omid Azizi and Megan Wachs and Wajahat Qadeer and Zain Asgar and Kyle Keley and John P. Stevenson and Stephen Richardson and Mark Horowitz and Benjamin Lee and Alex Solomatnikov and Amin Firoozshahian},
title = {Rethinking Digital Design: Why Design Must Change},
journal ={IEEE Micro},
volume = {30},
number = {6},
issn = {0272-1732},
year = {2010},
pages = {9-24},
doi = {http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MM.2010.81},
publisher = {IEEE Computer Society},
address = {Los Alamitos, CA, USA},
}
 
 
RefWorks Procite/RefMan/Endnote
x 
 
TY - MGZN
JO - IEEE Micro
TI - Rethinking Digital Design: Why Design Must Change
IS - 6
SN - 0272-1732
SP9
EP24
EPD - 9-24
A1 - Ofer Shacham,
A1 - Omid Azizi,
A1 - Megan Wachs,
A1 - Wajahat Qadeer,
A1 - Zain Asgar,
A1 - Kyle Keley,
A1 - John P. Stevenson,
A1 - Stephen Richardson,
A1 - Mark Horowitz,
A1 - Benjamin Lee,
A1 - Alex Solomatnikov,
A1 - Amin Firoozshahian,
PY - 2010
KW - Moore's Law
KW - Dennard scaling
KW - CMOS
KW - ASIC
KW - system on chip
KW - chip multiprocessor
KW - power efficiency
KW - hardware generation
KW - chip generator
KW - hardware optimization
KW - design methodology
KW - RTL verification
KW - H.264
VL - 30
JA - IEEE Micro
ER -
 
Ofer Shacham, Stanford University
Omid Azizi, Stanford University
Megan Wachs, Stanford University
Wajahat Qadeer, Stanford University
Zain Asgar, Stanford University
Kyle Keley, Stanford University
John P. Stevenson, Stanford University
Stephen Richardson, Stanford University
Mark Horowitz, Stanford University
Benjamin Lee, Duke University
Alex Solomatnikov, Hicamp Systems
Amin Firoozshahian, Hicamp Systems

Because of technology scaling, power dissipation is today's major performance limiter. Moreover, the traditional way to achieve power efficiency, application-specific designs, is prohibitively expensive. These power and cost issues necessitate rethinking digital design. To reduce design costs, we need to stop building chip instances, and start making chip generators instead. Domain-specific chip generators are templates that codify designer knowledge and design trade-offs to create different application-optimized chips.

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Index Terms:
Moore's Law, Dennard scaling, CMOS, ASIC, system on chip, chip multiprocessor, power efficiency, hardware generation, chip generator, hardware optimization, design methodology, RTL verification, H.264
Citation:
Ofer Shacham, Omid Azizi, Megan Wachs, Wajahat Qadeer, Zain Asgar, Kyle Keley, John P. Stevenson, Stephen Richardson, Mark Horowitz, Benjamin Lee, Alex Solomatnikov, Amin Firoozshahian, "Rethinking Digital Design: Why Design Must Change," IEEE Micro, vol. 30, no. 6, pp. 9-24, Nov.-Dec. 2010, doi:10.1109/MM.2010.81
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