Page 69 - System on Package_ Miniaturization of the Entire System

46 Cha pte r T w o

Connectivity
802.11 Bluetooth GPS UWB TV

Audio GSM

Imaging CONVERGE GPRS
Applications Video EDGE Communications

Games CDMA

PDA UMTS

FIGURE 2.5 Convergence in a mobile handset.

2. Application-specific IP Because an SOC is targeted to a specific application
domain, it enables building and integrating IP modules that perform the specific
domain functions efficiently—in terms of performance, power, and die size.
These application-specific IP blocks include hardware accelerators and
coprocessors that perform some of the performance-critical but standardized
functions. Some examples of such IPs include Viterbi and Turbo coprocessors
that help significantly improve the number of channels per device in wireless
infrastructure space. In the video space, a motion-estimation accelerator can
help meet the frames-per-second performance requirement with optimum
power and die size. In the digital still camera space, an image-processing
pipeline is implemented as a dedicated hardware accelerator—to enable lower
power while improving performance parameters such as shot-to-shot delay
and picture resolution. The application-specific IPs also include application-
specific interfaces such as video ports that conform to BT656 standards and
hence can seamlessly interface with video encoder-decoders and multichannel
audio serial ports that can directly talk to audio digital-to-analog converters
(DACs).
Consider a high-performance audio system. Figure 2.6 shows an implementa-
tion based on Texas Instruments’ TMS320C6711 general-purpose, 150-MHz
floating-point processor. The next-generation system based on DA610 SOC has
seven less devices—resulting in a lower cost (due to both a lower bill of material
and also a lower cost of manufacturing). DA610 achieves this by on-chip
integration of random-access memory (RAM) and read-only memory (ROM), a
higher-performance floating-point processor (225 MHz) that eliminates the
need for the microcontroller, and by providing multichannel audio serial
ports (McASP)—application-specific peripherals with seamless interface with