Hello everyone,
System-on-a-chip technology is very popular now, today I will give you a view about SoC.
What is System on a Chip?
SoC stands for system on a chip. This is a chip/integrated circuit that holds many components of a computer—usually the CPU, memory, I/O ports, and secondary storage—on a single substrate, such as silicon. Having all of these components on one substrate means SoCs use less power and take up less space than their multi-chip counterparts. SoCs are becoming increasingly popular with the growth of IoT and edge and mobile computing.
SoC is an integrated circuit that integrates a computer or other electronic system into a single chip. The system-on-chip can process digital signals, analog signals, mixed signals, and even higher frequencies. System-on-chip is often used in embedded systems. System-on-a-chip integrations are large, typically millions to tens of millions of gates, and the term "system-on-chip" is often used to refer to more powerful processors that can run certain versions of Windows and Linux. System-on-chip's stronger capabilities require an external memory chip, such as some system-on-chips equipped with flash memory. System-on-chips can often be connected to additional external devices. System-on-chip (SIC) requires higher integration scale of semiconductor devices. To better perform more complex tasks, some system-on-chips employ multiple processor cores.
Figure 1. Structure of SoC
A system-on-a-chip (SoC) is a microchip with all the necessary electronic circuits and parts for a given system, such as a smartphone or wearable computer, on a single integrated circuit (IC).
An SoC for a sound-detecting device, for example, might include an audio receiver, an analog-to-digital converter (ADC), a microprocessor, memory, and the input/output logic control for a user - all on a single chip.
Figure 2. Nvidia Tegra 650 SoC (Source: www.nvidia.com)
System-on-a-chip technology is used in small, increasingly complex consumer electronic devices. Some such devices have more processing power and memory than a typical 10-year-old desktop computer. In the future, SoC-equipped nanorobots (robots of microscopic dimensions) might act as programmable antibodies to fend off previously incurable diseases. SoC video devices might be embedded in the brains of blind people, allowing them to see and SoC audio devices might allow deaf people to hear. Handheld computers with small whip antennas might someday be capable of browsing the Internet at megabit-per-second speeds from any point on the surface of the earth.
SoC is evolving along with other technologies such as silicon-on-insulator (SOI), which can provide increased clock speeds while reducing the power consumed by a microchip.
Huawei SoC
HiSilicon’s latest flagship SoC is the 5nm, 5G enabled Kirin 9000, powering the Huawei Mate 40 series. It’s the successor to the Kirin 990 found in the Huawei P40 series and the Honor 30 Pro Plus.
As we have come to expect from a chip powering expensive top-tier models, there are plenty of high-performance components packed inside. An octa-core Cortex-A77 and A55 configuration paired with a 24 core Mali-G78 graphics unit make this HiSilicon’s most powerful chip to date. Although not quite as cutting edge as its competitors, who are using newer Arm CPU cores. The company has also improved its in-house image and video processing units to support high-end photography features, along with a very competitive integrated 5G modem package. Another of the Kirin 9000’s most notable features is the inclusion of a triple-clusterNeural Processing Unit (NPU) based on Huawei’s in-house DaVinci architecture.
Figure 3. Huawei Kirin 9000 SoC
SoC Advantages
Reduce volume: Combine several integrated circuits with different functions on a printed circuit board, and the volume is larger; if integrated into an SoC chip, the volume becomes smaller.
Cost reduction: Multiple integrated circuits need to be packaged and tested, and the cost is high; if integrated into an SoC chip, only one integrated circuit needs to be packaged and tested, and the cost is low.
Reduce power consumption and improve computing speed: The printed circuit board is used to combine several integrated circuits with different functions. The electrical signal must be transmitted over a long distance on the printed circuit board to perform operations. The power consumption is higher and the computing speed is faster. Slow; if integrated into an SoC chip, the electrical signal can be calculated by transmitting a short distance in the same integrated circuit, the power consumption is low, and the calculation speed is faster.
Improve system functions: Integrate integrated circuits with different functions into one SoC chip, which is smaller in size and can integrate more "functional units" to form a more powerful chip. At present, there are many very successful SoC chips sold in the market. <Picture 2> is the Tegra 650 multimedia system single chip designed by Nvidia (NVDA-US), which combines the central processing unit (CPU), graphics processing unit (GPU), Image processor (Image/Video processor), other peripheral interfaces, and other functional units.
SoC Challenges
Because the design and verification of SoC chips must cooperate with semiconductor manufacturing technology, and must have complete mixed-signal, digital and analog, low-frequency and high-frequency, memory and other related intellectual property (IP) industries. There are still many difficulties to be overcome in the design of the chip. The design bottlenecks of the SoC include:
➤Manufacturing bottleneck: The process technology of different functional units is different, and it is very difficult to simultaneously fabricate on silicon wafers. It is easier to integrate digital circuits, and it is more difficult to integrate digital and analog circuits.
➤Package bottleneck: SoC chips are powerful, and the operating frequency increases, which will inevitably cause noise and interference between the signals of the line, which must be overcome by flip-chip packaging, solder ball packaging, wafer-level packaging, and other technologies.
➤Testing bottleneck: The test machine must have the test functions of a variety of digital and analog signals at the same time, so it is necessary to develop a multi-functional single-model test machine to test SoC chips with different functions at the same time.
Thanks.
