Embedded Systems

ECE 529

Dr. Shubhajit Roy Chowdhury,

School of Computing and Electrical Engineering,
Indian Institute of Technology Mandi, India
Email: src@iitmandi.ac.in

Dr. Shubhajit Roy Chowdhury SCEE, IIT MANDI

What is an Embedded System?
• Embedded system: any device
that includes a programmable
computer but is not itself a
general-purpose computer.
• Take advantage of application
characteristics to optimize the
design:
– don’t need all the general-
purpose bells and whistles.

Dr. Shubhajit Roy Chowdhury SCEE, IIT MANDI

 Embedded Hardware

output analog

input analog
CPU

mem
embedded
computer

Dr. Shubhajit Roy Chowdhury SCEE, IIT MANDI

 Example embedded computing
systems

Motorola Siemens Apple

BMW

Dr. Shubhajit Roy Chowdhury SCEE, IIT MANDI

 Examples

• Personal digital assistant (PDA).

• Printer.
• Cell phone.
• Automobile: engine, brakes, dash, etc.
• Television.
• Household appliances.
• PC keyboard (scans keys).
Dr. Shubhajit Roy Chowdhury SCEE, IIT MANDI
 Some common characteristics of
embedded systems
• Single-functioned
– Executes a single program, repeatedly
• Tightly-constrained
– Low cost, low power, small, fast, etc.
• Reactive and real-time
– Continually reacts to changes in the system’s
environment
– Must compute certain results in real-time without
delay

Dr. Shubhajit Roy Chowdhury SCEE, IIT MANDI

 Early history

• Late 1940’s: MIT Whirlwind computer was

designed for real-time operations.
– Originally designed to control an aircraft
simulator.
• First microprocessor was Intel 4004 in early
1970’s.
• HP-35 calculator used several chips to
implement a microprocessor in 1972.
Dr. Shubhajit Roy Chowdhury SCEE, IIT MANDI
 Early history, cont’d.

• Automobiles used microprocessor-based

engine controllers starting in 1970’s.
– Control fuel/air mixture, engine timing, etc.
– Multiple modes of operation: warm-up, cruise,
hill climbing, etc.
– Provides lower emissions, better fuel efficiency.

Dr. Shubhajit Roy Chowdhury SCEE, IIT MANDI

 Design challenge – optimizing design
metrics
• Common metrics
– Unit cost: the monetary cost of manufacturing each copy of the
system, excluding NRE cost
– NRE cost (Non-Recurring Engineering cost): The one-
time monetary cost of designing the system
– Size: the physical space required by the system
– Performance: the execution time or throughput of the system
– Power: the amount of power consumed by the system
– Flexibility: the ability to change the functionality of the system
without incurring heavy NRE cost

Dr. Shubhajit Roy Chowdhury SCEE, IIT MANDI

 Design challenge – optimizing design
metrics
• Common metrics (continued)
– Time-to-prototype: the time needed to build a working version
of the system
– Time-to-market: the time required to develop a system to the
point that it can be released and sold to customers
– Maintainability: the ability to modify the system after its initial
release
– Correctness, safety, many more

Dr. Shubhajit Roy Chowdhury SCEE, IIT MANDI

Time-to-market: a demanding design
metric
• Time required to develop a
product to the point it can
be sold to customers
• Market window
Revenues ($)

– Period during which the

product would have
highest sales
Time (months) • Average time-to-market
constraint is about 8
months
• Delays can be costly

Dr. Shubhajit Roy Chowdhury SCEE, IIT MANDI

 Losses due to delayed market entry
• Simplified revenue model
Peak revenue
– Product life = 2W, peak at W
– Time of market entry defines
Peak revenue from
a triangle, representing
Revenues ($)

delayed entry
On-time market penetration
Market fall
Market rise
– Triangle area equals revenue
Delayed • Loss
– The difference between the
D W 2W on-time and delayed triangle
On-time Delayed Time areas
entry entry

Dr. Shubhajit Roy Chowdhury SCEE, IIT MANDI

 Processors
• How much should be the processor?
– Flexibility
– Performance
– Cost

• Hardware software Co-design

Dr. Shubhajit Roy Chowdhury SCEE, IIT MANDI

 Processors
• Design Choices: General Purpose Vs ASIPs Vs
ASICs
– Datapath: Circuitry for transforming data and storing
intermediate results
• ALU, Muxes and Registers
• Size of processor -- bit width of data path
• Pipelined and non-pipelined datapaths
– Controller: Circuitry to perform fetch, decode, execute
automaton
• Microprogram controlled and hardwire controlled

Dr. Shubhajit Roy Chowdhury SCEE, IIT MANDI

 General Purpose Processors

Control
Reg. file

IR PC
Gen. ALU

Program Memory Data Memory

Total=0; for I=1 to n loop

total+= M[I]; end loop

Dr. Shubhajit Roy Chowdhury SCEE, IIT MANDI

 Application Specific Instruction Set Processors

Control
Reg. file

IR PC Custom.
ALU

Program Memory Data Memory

Total=0; for I=1 to n loop

total+= M[I]; end loop

Dr. Shubhajit Roy Chowdhury SCEE, IIT MANDI

 Single Purpose Processors (ASICs)

Datapath
Control index
total
State reg.
+

Data Memory

Dr. Shubhajit Roy Chowdhury SCEE, IIT MANDI

 Choice of IC: Custom and Semi custom ICs

• An IC consists of number of layers

– Transistors - gates - connection of gates
– masking - depositing photo sensitive material on chip
surface
– Set of masks --> Layout
• Feature size - narrowest line we can create on a chip ,
presently submicron
• Full custom ICs -all layers optimized for performance
– high NRE cost

Dr. Shubhajit Roy Chowdhury SCEE, IIT MANDI

 Semi-custom ICs
• In a semi-custom ASIC the lower layers are fully or partially
built leaving us to finish the upper layers.

• Gate array: Masks for the array of gates and the transistors
are already built - remaining task is to establish
interconnection to achieve the implementation.

• Standard cell technology: Logic level cells, such as AND

gate or (AND-OR-NOT) combinations have masks pre-
designed. Remaining task - Arrange these portions into
complete masks for the gate level and connect the cells.

Dr. Shubhajit Roy Chowdhury SCEE, IIT MANDI

 Programmable Logic Devices (PLDs)
• All layers already exist - layers implement a
programmable circuit (creating/destroying links
between gates by fusing links or by setting
programmable bits)
• PLAs: Programmable Logic Arrays - programmable
array of AND gates + programmable array of OR
gates
• FPGAs: offers more general connectivity among
blocks of logic rather than arrays of gates
– Xilinx, Actel ; rapid prototyping

Dr. Shubhajit Roy Chowdhury SCEE, IIT MANDI

• Trend is to design and simulate on general
purpose
• Implement on Semi custom for reducing
time to market window
• Refine from experience
• Move to Custom design
• Also, first map to older tested design (say
0.2 micron) before moving to new
technology (say 0.08 micron) - clock speed
improves over time

Dr. Shubhajit Roy Chowdhury SCEE, IIT MANDI

 Some issues in Processor Design for
Embedded Systems

ASICs
DSPs and
ASIPs
Op/Watt

Processors

Technology 
Dr. Shubhajit Roy Chowdhury SCEE, IIT MANDI
 Power and Energy
E   Pdt
• Both P and E are important
• P affects size of power supply, voltage
regulators, cooling
• E affects battery life
– Dependent on code efficiency
– Memory issues

Dr. Shubhajit Roy Chowdhury SCEE, IIT MANDI

Dynamic Power Management

Processor
Power
Supply

Dr. Shubhajit Roy Chowdhury SCEE, IIT MANDI

 Run
(400mW)
90musec
10musec
10musec 160
musec
Idle Sleep (160
(50mW) mu W)
90 musec

Dr. Shubhajit Roy Chowdhury SCEE, IIT MANDI

 Clock network power model
• Clock is a major power sink in modern designs.
• Major elements of the clock power model:
– Global clock lines.
– Global drivers.
– Loads on the clock network.
• Must handle gated clocks.

Dr. Shubhajit Roy Chowdhury SCEE, IIT MANDI

 Books
“Embedded System Design: A unified hardware / software
introduction”, Frank Vahid and Tony Givargis (Wiley)
“Embedded Systems”, Raj Kamal
“Computers as Components”, Wayne Wolf
“VHDL Primer”, J. Bhasker
“FPGA based System Design”, Wayne Wolf
“Advanced Digital System Design using VHDL”, Charles H. Roth

Dr. Shubhajit Roy Chowdhury SCEE, IIT MANDI

 Evaluation Weightages
• Quiz 1: 10%
• Quiz 2: 20%
• End Semester Examination: 20%
• Assignments: 10%
• Unannounced Quiz: 10%
• Practical: 20%
• Project: 10%

Dr. Shubhajit Roy Chowdhury SCEE, IIT MANDI

 Thank you

Dr. Shubhajit Roy Chowdhury SCEE, IIT MANDI