Overview

1. Jeff Brownscheidle, Maureen Delaney, Eric Fluhr, Pat McIlmoyle, Tien Tran – IBM Systems & Technology Group POWER™ SynthesisThe transition from custom circuit design to large block synthesis in a high performance environment

2. Overview • VLSI Design: A Brief History of Recent Processor Design at IBM • Methodology Evolution: From Custom-driven to Synthesis-driven • A New Design Style: Large Block Synthesis (LBS) • Converting Custom Designs into LBS Designs • Advantages and Techniques of LBS

3. A POWER™ Retrospective

4. Mechanisms of Microprocessor Complexity

5. The Conventional Approach: Less Synthesis, More Custom ISU Generation 1 ISU Generation 2 Custom Synthesized

6. Trending Towards Synthesized Designs Synthesized Logic Percent of Unit ISU Generation 3

7. Design Type Spectrum 5) Custom Design 4) Embedded, Fully Routed Custom Components New Design Techniques 3) Embedded, Un-Routed Custom Components Design Customization 2) Latch, Local Clock Buffer Preplacement 1) VHDL structuring &parm customization 0) Random Logic Module (“Flat” Synthesis) Design Effort

8. A New Design Type—Large Block Synthesis (LBS) Sample Configurations Design Example Synthesized Random Logic

9. The Power of LBS • “Structured” Flat Design • Flexibility & Incremental Customization • Scalability • Fast path to initial timing • Reduction in layout time

10. Design Merging Individual Designs Merged LBS

11. Migrating a Design to LBS Custom LBS

12. VHDL Structuring Latches Latches Latches Latches

13. Summary • Large Block Synthesis: A modern, versatile alternative to custom high-performance design • Potential power and area savings over full custom design • Ability to iteratively increase custom designer input to converge toward a circuit solution • Long-term outlook: Can LBS radically influence future time-to-market expectations?