Cost trade-offs in system on chip designs

Advances in technology have led to a drive towards system on chip (SoC) designs. However manufacturing and test costs have increased as rapidly as design complexity. Hence, in order to produce SoC designs at reasonable cost, both system-level and die-level cost trade-offs must be made. This paper illustrates the methodologies used in analyzing such trade-offs. Examples in the paper indicate that using advanced technologies to manufacture SoC designs may sometimes be detrimental in terms of total system costs