Every year as spring turns to summer, we can count on a new
Reference Flow from TSMC. While the seasons are driven by the laws of nature,
the Reference Flow is driven by the laws of Moore. Typically the new additions
to the flow have to do with accounting for new process effects such as signal
integrity, yield, and leakage power. But this year's flow, which is focused on
28nm, added support for TLM design. Why would TSMC care about transaction level modeling? And how
does that apply to 28nm?
The short answer is Silicon Realization. It's no secret that
TSMC would like to get designs into successful volume silicon as quickly as
possible. And as with each new process node, the designs that will be done at
28nm will be larger, more complex, and higher volume than anything before. In
order to address these challenges, it has become imperative to design at a
higher-level of abstraction. Plus with today's chips being much more
software-driven, it's becoming pretty clear that SystemC-based TLM design will
be the most efficient start to the Silicon Realization process.
Of course, the same could be said for the past couple of
process nodes, so why TLM now? Perhaps it is due to high-level synthesis
finally maturing with tools like Cadence's C-to-Silicon Compiler, which connects TLM
design to mainstream implementation by embedding RTL Compiler in order to
perform accurate tradeoffs using the standard TSMC synthesis libraries. This
unburdens logic designers from having to manually design and functionally verify
micro-architectures - they can now concentrate on designing and verifying
concepts, then using automated methods to realize them in silicon.
This is why TSMC cares, and it's a big win for logic
designers.
Jack Erickson