Architecting and Building High-Speed SoCs

Design, develop, and debug complex FPGA-based systems-on-chip

Mounir Maaref

BIRMINGHAM—MUMBAI

Architecting and Building High-Speed SoCs

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First published: December 2022

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To my very dear parents, Rahma and Kouider, may they accept here the tribute of my gratitude, which, however great it may be, will never equal their tenderness and their devotion. To my beloved wife, Nadia, who fills my life with joy and happiness, and who without her support this work would not have been possible. To my lovely children, Anissa and Rayan, who give me the courage to persevere in my endeavors and the chance to be a parent, they help me every day give meaning to my life. To my dear sisters and brothers and to all my family and friends that they find here the expression of my most sincere feelings.

Contributors

About the author

Mounir Maaref lives in the UK and works as a Principal SoC Architect. He has 25 years’ experience in the microelectronics industry spanning FPGAs, ASICs, embedded processing, networking, data storage, satellite communications, Bluetooth, and WiFi connectivity. He likes working on cutting edge technologies involving both hardware and software. His main focus is on the system architecture design, hardware and software interactions, performance analysis, and modeling. He has published several application notes and white papers and has been a speaker at many conferences worldwide. He holds a masters degree in Electronics and Telecoms. He is a 2nd dan black belt in Tang Soo Do and is getting trained to become a martial arts instructor.

I would like to thank all the friendly and professional staff at Packt, with whom I was privileged to interact at all the stages of writing and publishing this work. Their guidance and help were crucial in transforming my ideas into the material that we share in this book. I am immensely grateful to Martin Abrahams, my friend and ex-colleague at Micron, who took the time to review my work and provide valuable feedback that only made this book better. I would also like to thank all my friends and colleagues at Samsung Cambridge Solutions Centre, from whom I have been receiving a great opportunity to learn and contribute.

About the reviewer

Martin Abrahams has worked in the semiconductor industry for over sixteen years in medical and automotive image sensor development for Micron and Onsemi. He is the architect for Onsemi of virtual prototyping for embedded microprocessor development using SystemC transaction-level modeling and leads the development of hardware component models for digital verification using SystemVerilog and UVM. Martin received a first class honours bachelor of science degree from the University of Bristol and was awarded a doctor of philosophy by the University of Southampton. Earlier in his career, he was a founder at EDA startup TransEDA. TransEDA developed the first VHDL and Verilog code coverage tools which are now central to modern RTL verification.

I would like to thank my family and colleagues at Onsemi for the time they have granted me to investigate, develop, and deploy new design and verification methodologies that transform the way we design digital electronics. I must also acknowledge their patience and encouragement through the many attempts it takes to get to a working solution. I would also like to thank Mounir for his kind invitation to review his book.