Consumer digitization: accelerating DSP applications, growing VLSI design challenges

Summary form only given. Two new technologies have emerged to lead the Internet Age: Digital Signal Processors (DSPs) and analog semiconductors. One of the key challenges of the dramatic growth and widespread application of DSPs is in terms of the increasing complexities of VLSI design. The challenge of integrating more transistors, but using less power, has led to a dramatic evolution of semiconductors and CAD methodologies. Functional integration implies taking analog and digital functions that had been handled earlier by separate chips, and combining them onto a single chip. This analog integration challenge (with minimal cost delta due to additional masks), the need to miniaturize, the need for high performance at the lowest possible power makes it a very interesting challenge for VLSI designers