Microarchitecture development via metropolis successive platform refinement

Productivity data for IC designs indicates an exponential increase in design time and cost with the number of elements that are to be included in a device. Present applications require the development of complex systems to support novel functionality. To cope with these difficulties, we need to change radically the present design methodology to allow for extensive re-use, early verification in the design cycle, pervasive use of software, and architecture-level optimization. Platform-based design as defined in A. Sangiovanni-Vincentelli (2002), has these characteristics. We present the application of this methodology to a complex industrial application provided by Cypress Semiconductor. In this case study, we focus on a particular aspect of this methodology that eases considerably the verification process: successive refinement. We compare this approach versus a parallel team of designers who developed the IC using standard design approaches.