This book contains extended and revised versions of the best papers that were p- sented during the 16th edition of the IFIP/IEEE WG10.5 International Conference on Very Large Scale Integration, a global System-on-a-Chip Design & CAD conference. The 16th conference was held at the Grand Hotel of Rhodes Island, Greece (October 13-15, 2008). Previous conferences have taken place in Edinburgh, Trondheim, V- couver, Munich, Grenoble, Tokyo, Gramado, Lisbon, Montpellier, Darmstadt, Perth, Nice and Atlanta. VLSI-SoC 2008 was the 16th in a series of international conferences sponsored by IFIP TC 10 Working Group 10.5 and IEEE CEDA that explores the state of the art and the new developments in the field of VLSI systems and their designs. The purpose of the conference was to provide a forum to exchange ideas and to present industrial and research results in the fields of VLSI/ULSI systems, embedded systems and - croelectronic design and test.

The 11 th IFIP International Conference on Very Large Scale Integration, in Montpellier, France, December 3-5,2001, was a great success. The main focus was about IP Cores, Circuits and System Designs & Applications as well as SOC Design Methods and CAD. This book contains the best papers (39 among 70) that have been presented during the conference. Those papers deal with all aspects of importance for the design of the current and future integrated systems. System on Chip (SOC) design is today a big challenge for designers, as a SOC may contain very different blocks, such as microcontrollers, DSPs, memories including embedded DRAM, analog, FPGA, RF front-ends for wireless communications and integrated sensors. The complete design of such chips, in very deep submicron technologies down to 0.13 mm, with several hundreds of millions of transistors, supplied at less than 1 Volt, is a very challenging task if design, verification, debug and industrial test are considered. The microelectronic revolution is fascinating; 55 years ago, in late 1947, the transistor was invented, and everybody knows that it was by William Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter H. Brattein, Bell Telephone Laboratories, which received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1956. Probably, everybody thinks that it was recognized immediately as a major invention.

Design technology to address the new and vast problem of heterogeneous embedded systems design while remaining compatible with standard "More Moore" flows, i.e. capable of simultaneously handling both silicon complexity and system complexity, represents one of the most important challenges facing the semiconductor industry today and will be for several years to come. While the micro-electronics industry, over the years and with its spectacular and unique evolution, has built its own specific design methods to focus mainly on the management of complexity through the establishment of abstraction levels, the emergence of device heterogeneity requires new approaches enabling the satisfactory design of physically heterogeneous embedded systems for the widespread deployment of such systems.

Heterogeneous Embedded Systems, compiled largely from a set of contributions from participants of past editions of the Winter School on Heterogeneous Embedded Systems Design Technology (FETCH), proposes a necessarily broad and holistic overview of design techniques used to tackle the various facets of heterogeneity in terms of technology and opportunities at the physical level, signal representations and different abstraction levels, architectures and components based on hardware and software, in all the main phases of design (modeling, validation with multiple models of computation, synthesis and optimization). It concentrates on the specific issues at the interfaces, and is divided into two main parts. The first part examines mainly theoretical issues and focuses on the modeling, validation and design techniques themselves. The second part illustrates the use of these methods in various design contexts at the forefront of new technology and architectural developments.

This book is the fourth in a series on novel low power design architectures, methods and design practices. It results from of a large European project started in 1997, whose goal is to promote the further development and the faster and wider industrial use of advanced design methods for reducing the power con sumption of electronic systems. Low power design became crucial with the wide spread of portable infor mation and communication terminals, where a small battery has to last for a long period. High performance electronics, in addition, suffers from a per manent increase of the dissipated power per square millimeter of silicon, due to the increasing clock-rates, which causes cooling and reliability problems or otherwise limits the performance. The European Union's Information Technologies Programme 'Esprit' did therefore launch a 'Pilot action for Low Power Design', which eventually grew to 19 R&D projects and one coordination project, with an overall budget of 14 million EURO. It is meanwhile known as European Low Power Initiative for Electronic System Design (ESD-LPD) and will be completed in the year 2002. It involves to develop or demonstrate new design methods for power reduction, while the coordination project takes care that the methods, experiences and results are properly documented and publicised."

The power consumption of microprocessors is one of the most important challenges of high-performance chips and portable devices. In chapters drawn from Piguet's recently published Low-Power Electronics Design, Low-Power CMOS Circuits: Technology, Logic Design, and CAD Tools addresses the design of low-power circuitry in deep submicron technologies. It provides a focused reference for specialists involved in designing low-power circuitry, from transistors to logic gates. The book is organized into three broad sections for convenient access. The first examines the history of low-power electronics along with a look at emerging and possible future technologies. It also considers other technologies, such as nanotechnologies and optical chips, that may be useful in designing integrated circuits. The second part explains the techniques used to reduce power consumption at low levels. These include clock gating, leakage reduction, interconnecting and communication on chips, and adiabatic circuits. The final section discusses various CAD tools for designing low-power circuits. This section includes three chapters that demonstrate the tools and low-power design issues at three major companies that produce logic synthesizers. Providing detailed examinations contributed by leading experts, Low-Power CMOS Circuits: Technology, Logic Design, and CAD Tools supplies authoritative information on how to design and model for high performance with low power consumption in modern integrated circuits. It is a must-read for anyone designing modern computers or embedded systems.

The power consumption of integrated circuits is one of the most problematic considerations affecting the design of high-performance chips and portable devices. The study of power-saving design methodologies now must also include subjects such as systems on chips, embedded software, and the future of microelectronics. Low-Power Electronics Design covers all major aspects of low-power design of ICs in deep submicron technologies and addresses emerging topics related to future design. This volume explores, in individual chapters written by expert authors, the many low-power techniques born during the past decade. It also discusses the many different domains and disciplines that impact power consumption, including processors, complex circuits, software, CAD tools, and energy sources and management. The authors delve into what many specialists predict about the future by presenting techniques that are promising but are not yet reality. They investigate nanotechnologies, optical circuits, ad hoc networks, e-textiles, as well as human powered sources of energy. Low-Power Electronics Design delivers a complete picture of today's methods for reducing power, and also illustrates the advances in chip design that may be commonplace 10 or 15 years from now.

The 11 th IFIP International Conference on Very Large Scale Integration, in Montpellier, France, December 3-5,2001, was a great success. The main focus was about IP Cores, Circuits and System Designs & Applications as well as SOC Design Methods and CAD. This book contains the best papers (39 among 70) that have been presented during the conference. Those papers deal with all aspects of importance for the design of the current and future integrated systems. System on Chip (SOC) design is today a big challenge for designers, as a SOC may contain very different blocks, such as microcontrollers, DSPs, memories including embedded DRAM, analog, FPGA, RF front-ends for wireless communications and integrated sensors. The complete design of such chips, in very deep submicron technologies down to 0.13 mm, with several hundreds of millions of transistors, supplied at less than 1 Volt, is a very challenging task if design, verification, debug and industrial test are considered. The microelectronic revolution is fascinating; 55 years ago, in late 1947, the transistor was invented, and everybody knows that it was by William Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter H. Brattein, Bell Telephone Laboratories, which received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1956. Probably, everybody thinks that it was recognized immediately as a major invention.

This book is the fourth in a series on novel low power design architectures, methods and design practices. It results from of a large European project started in 1997, whose goal is to promote the further development and the faster and wider industrial use of advanced design methods for reducing the power con sumption of electronic systems. Low power design became crucial with the wide spread of portable infor mation and communication terminals, where a small battery has to last for a long period. High performance electronics, in addition, suffers from a per manent increase of the dissipated power per square millimeter of silicon, due to the increasing clock-rates, which causes cooling and reliability problems or otherwise limits the performance. The European Union's Information Technologies Programme 'Esprit' did therefore launch a 'Pilot action for Low Power Design', which eventually grew to 19 R&D projects and one coordination project, with an overall budget of 14 million EURO. It is meanwhile known as European Low Power Initiative for Electronic System Design (ESD-LPD) and will be completed in the year 2002. It involves to develop or demonstrate new design methods for power reduction, while the coordination project takes care that the methods, experiences and results are properly documented and publicised."