The department of Computer Architecture and System Engineering of the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain) offers technical advising in automatic design of embedded digital systems, and specific purpose integrated circuits with advanced CAD tools (Synopsys, Xilinx Foundation, etc), as well as prototyping on programmable logic devices (FPGA). One of the main advantages applying these techniques is the considerable improvement of time-to-market that can be achieved

A digital system design with CAD tools is a flow of tasks. It begins with the characterization of the complete system, from which those functionalities to be made by a dedicated hardware circuit are extracted. Next this circuit is specified by a hardware description language (typically VHDL) and is simulated with a behavioural model of the rest of the system. Afterwards, by the use of several specialized CAD tools in different abstraction levels, several alternative designs are explored automatically in a short period. Once the ideal design is achieved, it is projected over a programmable technology in such a way that a working hardware prototype is quickly available. If the prototype passes the evaluation, and the production volume compensates for fabrication costs, the design can be finally projected on an ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit).

Innovative Aspects:

The use of automatic design tools allows companies develop, with less cost and a greater degree of confidence, a quick exploration of the different implementation alternatives of an integrated digital system. And also if we think about the availability of making a prototype over FPGA’s (also supported by the CAD tools), it is possible to have in a quite short period several hardware circuits with different capabilities, working and ready for customer evaluation.

Main Advantages:

A considerable improvement of time-to-market can be achieved. Furthermore, due to an intensive use of hardware description languages during the design cycle, the company productivity improves thanks to design reuse and exhaustive documentation.

• C/Velazquez no 76
• E-28001
• Tel.: +34 91 781 6577
• Tel.: +34 91 781 65 72
• Fax.: +34 91 576 6052
• omendez@madrimasd.org