TABLE OF CONTENTS The technology development has made it possible to develop chips where a complete system with an enormous number of transistors, which are clocked at an immense frequency and partitioned into a number of clock-domains, is placed on a single die. As the technology development makes it possible to design these highly advanced system chips or SOC (system-on-chip), the EDA (Electronic Design Automation) tools are aiming at keeping up the productivity, making it possible to design a highly advanced system with a reasonable effort in a reasonable time. New design methodologies are under constant development. At the moment, a modular design approach where modules are integrated to a system is promising. The advantage with such an approach is that pre-designed and pre-verified modules, blocks of logic or cores, with technology specific details, can at a reasonable time and effort be integrated to a system. The core provider designs the cores and the system integrator selects the appropriate cores for the system where the cores may origin from previous in-house designs, or from different core vendors (companies). The cores can be delivered in various formats. They can in general be classified as soft cores, firm cores, and hard cores. Soft cores are general high-level specifications where the system integrator can, if necessary, apply modifications. Hard cores are gate-level specifications where, if any, only a few modifications are possible. Firm cores are somewhere between soft cores and hard cores. Soft cores allow more flexibility compared to hard cores. The advantage...
