Developing SoCs for digital consumer electronics

This paper reviews and discusses a technical feature, a business strategy, and a development management method for SoCs dedicated to digital consumer electronics. Market of the digital consumer electronics has been growing and SoC is a key technology for success. Media processor is a powerful solution for high speed operation with low power consumption. Architecture of the media processor should be optimized to meet the requirement for each application. Mixed signal technology becomes vital for almost all SoCs along with increase of the integration level and wide use of digital storage and digital wired and wireless network technologies. A new simulation method and a new development system are needed to increase the design quality and to shorten the development TAT time. A global development management method between every development sections is needed to address the complicated tradeoff issues and global optimization from system to silicon.