Simulation of digital broadband system-on-chip

Simulation of a complex system on chip is a must-do exercise to increase the level of confidence that the final product will actually work. Even though hitting the 100% confidence level might seem like a daunting task, careful planning and good methodology can ensure a reasonable level of confidence, without imposing a big delay on the project design cycle. The appropriate resources allocation, such as the Front-end functionality, ASIC functionality and programmable cores, is the main target for this system simulations effort. The division of functions among system resources can be a bit tricky. From one side, a given sub-block can be critical in the system performance, yet on the other side, this sub-block proves to be an expensive block. This paper presents the simulations methodology used for multiple examples showing how the local optimization of sub-blocks will not always lead to the global optimum solution.