Ex2: 2010/11: ACS P35 System on Chip, Design and Modelling, Week 3 Exercise. Please answer the following three questions using between 200 to 500 words each (excluding figures and citations) and hand in to Student Admin. 1. What is meant by an IP block in SoC design. Find several examples online and tabulate the available information for all examples in a single table. 2. What is meant by the 'memory map' of a computer system. Where should/is memory map information be stored/embodied at design time and at runtime. Consider an XML schema (along the lines of Spirit IP-XACT) for storing memory map information. What tools can be envisaged for manipulating such a schema? Perhaps explore any relevant eclipse plugins. 3. Estimate the performance differences between running a cpu-bound embedded application on an instruction set simulator and on its target hardware. Mention the effects of different implementations for an ISS (such as interpreting and JITing) and effects of modelling caches and instruction fetch overhead. ---- Notes (will be updated and extended slightly...): Detailed IP block information, including pricing, is likely to be only available under NDA and is not expected in your answer. Cpu-bound means that performance is dominated by the instruction fectch and execution rather than making significant use of hardware devices or waiting for hardware devices to respond. Q. You have asked us to consider examples of IP blocks and tabulate relevant information in a single table. I'm not sure how to go about doing this. If you take, say, an LCD controller and a DSP, the information describing these will be completely different so what fields would you use to construct a table? A. All IP blocks need to 'look the same' at a certain level of abstraction. Parameters they may share are what types of simulation model are available, what bus connection they use, how many gates they have, whether an electronic data sheet gives a programmers model, how much NoC bandwidth they consume, what forms of device driver are available, an dso on.