A highly efficient and reliable SOC design for legacy embedded applications

A highly integrated system-on-chip (SOC) can be a viable replacement for a design based on legacy X86 series based design. Embedded processors for aviation field and industrial controls are the examples for aforesaid proposal. To reduce the high volume of old system, we design and implement a SOC embodying a low power X86 instruction compatible 32-bit CISC microprocessor. Outside the processor core, basic control modules are supplied, such as memory controller, interrupt management system, and other important IO devices. All the modules provide a high degree of existing system compatibility. As the control center of real time process system, a fast interrupt response time is quite important. We employ techniques both in and out of the processor core to reach this demand. For a robust design, a lot of attention is paid between the SOC and the outside world. The SOC is implemented by SMIC 0.18um Technology and contains about 4 million transistors. The processor core and external control parts operate at 133MHz and 66MHz respectively. The whole chip consumes about only 550mw on normal operation. Test results show that the SOC is quite reliable and has an average of 21.9%improvement on the interrupt response time.