Hierarchical design allows grouping IPs together for various design reasons. The following are examples,
Hierarchy changes can happen during the design lifecycle as well. For instance, a change in power islands could mean big RTL changes in restructuring the hierarchy. Let's say we are designing a chip called orion in Composer IDE that looks like the following. orion : { comm : { comm.gpio_ctl comm.uart_ctl } padring proc : { proc.intr proc.bridge proc.proc } storage : { storage.sram storage.dma storage.sdio_ctl storage.sram_ctl storage.sdram_ctl } } Let's say we need to move the sdram controller, sdram_ctl to the top level due to newly imposed timing and power domain related requirements. If you are editing verilog this can be somewhat of a real headache. Imagine moving more blocks than just one. In Composer IDE, this task is quite a bit of fun! All we need is the following few intutive SoCBuilder statements, hierarchy auto { comm : { comm.gpio_ctl comm.uart_ctl } padring storage.sdram_ctl proc : { proc.intr proc.bridge proc.proc } storage : { storage.sram storage.dma storage.sdio_ctl storage.sram_ctl } } Now the produced RTL will look like the following block diagram, As you can see, the sdram controller has moved to the top level. It really is that simple. Move as many blocks as you like, create brand new levels, or collapse a few! Just mold the way a sculptor molds the clay to produce a shape that he really needs.
Your designers will be fully empowered beyond the limits of hierarchy. They can organize their design the way it makes sense to them using functional cohesion. Later, it can be morphed into the structure that works out for a given application. A common architecture can be reused over many chips, many silicon feature sizes, to serve many application domain requirements without worries. Easy reuse is the central theme of Composer IDE. Composer IDE is packed with even more capabilities to improve chip design productivity. Contact us to arrange for a demo to go over the full capability of Composer IDE. |
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