Modern microelectronic technology makes the implementation of a complete complex system on a single chip possible, including digital and analog (re-con®gurable) hardware, embedded software, A/D and D/A converters, sensors, actuators and communication modules. The spectacular advances in semiconductor technology, the development and rapid broad acceptance of global networking and mobile wire-less communication, and rapid convergence of the traditionally separated information technology, communications and media into one united information technology has created a large discrepancy between what is possible and what is used now-a-days. This discrepancy creates both a very strong technology push and a very strong market pull to create new or modi®ed products and services, and is resulting in an information technology revolution.
The ability to implement a complex system on a single chip has generated a strong stimulus for further development of the embedded system area. Completely new sorts of systems for known and new applications are now feasible and aordable, in particular, for applications that require miniaturization, high performance and low power dissipation, but also wire-less communications. These systems can be embedded inside of medical devices, robots, machines, planes, cars etc. The potential market for such systems is huge with applications in many areas. The system-on-a-chip technology enables implementation of the re-programmable active memories together with various hardwired processing modules on a single chip. It enables various mixtures of the re-con®gurable and hardwired parts as well as various hierarchical memory structures involving dierent grain memories more or less strongly coupled with dierent grain processors. The possibility to mix various technologies and grains of hardware on a single chip, and the availability of complex re-programmable active memories (e.g., FPGAs), has opened new ways to algorithms in hardware, custom computing machines and re-con®gurable computing. While in traditional microprocessors programming results in a dynamic con®guration of interconnections between the RTL blocks, in FPGA-based re-con®gurable systems programming is at a lower logic-synthesis level. This enables a better adjustment of both the circuit interconnections and the circuits themselves to a speci®c application, and results in higher speed among other things. Recon®gurable systems make eective and ecient implementation of massively parallel architectures possible. The run-time re-con®guration enhances both the sub-design and hardware reuse, and speed at the same time.
On the one hand, the systems-on-a-chip and other ASICs oer the best performance for a particular application. On the other, they are very complex, dicult and time consuming to develop, produce and validate, expensive, and risky. Now-a-days, they can only be economically justi®ed for applications that are very important or dicult from the viewpoint of the physical parameter satisfaction, or involve long production series. Moreover, progress in microelectronic technology is extremely fast. It is outstripping the designers' abilities to make use of the created opportunities. The complexity and quality of systems as well as their design and production cost and time tend to be more limited by the design methods and tools than by the microelectronic technology. Additionally, the IT business will face big worldwide shortfalls in a quali®ed work force for many years. The problem cannot be solved by re®nement of the traditional means or their simple extensions. Substantial improvement can only be achieved through development and application of a new generation of design paradigms, methods and tools, more suitable in the new situation.