The History of the SOC Revolution

We cover SoC design from its roots in hardware design reuse and the movements in the mid-1990’s that led to the creation of a reuse guideline-based approach for block-based design, the formation of the Virtual Socket Interface Alliance (VSIA), and the development of the block-based approach to SoC composition. We discuss the early successes and failures of IP reuse and what has been learned from these approaches. We will study the most successful SoC design methodology seen to this date: the platform-based design approach. Finally, we conclude by looking ahead to new styles of SoC and new design approaches which may emerge in the future.