Everything but the kitchen sink

&ELECTRONICSYSTEM-LEVEL (ESL)design is one of the newer three-letter acronyms (TLAs) in the design and EDA fields. Like its back-end cousin, design for manufacturability (DFM), ESL’s role in the design process is, and will likely remain, controversial. The definition of ESL is not widely agreed upon: What constitutes ESL is open for much debate, and many tool vendors seem to argue that ESL tools are what they happen to sell. Moreover, whether there is a large commercial market for ESL tools is an open question. Indeed, the long-predicted ‘‘hockey stick’’ for commercial ESL viability always seems to be part of next year’s season; and we are a long way fromwinning the Stanley Cup. Given this current state of development, it was a pleasure to read a new book on system-level design: Integrated System-Level Modeling of Network-on-Chip Enabled Multi-processor Platforms, by Tim Kogel, Rainer Leupers, and Heinrich Meyr. Not least of the pleasures was seeing four of my favorite TLAs spelled out in the title—namely, system-level modeling (SLM, a major part of ESL); network-on-chip (NoC); multiprocessor (an important part of MPSoC); and platforms (as in platform-based design, or PBD). For the past several years, I have been knocking about the design, EDA, and IP industries, working with all of these concepts in one way or another. So, seeing these concerns reflected in the title of this book made me immediately want to read it (and review it). This book is based on Tim Kogel’s PhD research at RWTH (Die Leitseite der Rheinisch-Westfälischen Technischen Hochschule) Aachen, but it is far more than the typical, narrowly focused, research monograph. The book covers most of the major areas of system-level design and modeling, and much of the work described has been incorporated into a commercial ESL tool: CoWare’s Architects View Framework. This book’s scope and range of pragmatic ideas make it valuable for a wide audience. In particular, Chapters 1 through 5 provide an excellent overview of a wide range of current system-level design concepts, principles, issues, and related work. When combined with the extensive list of references (260!), this is a very valuable resource for anyone interested in the area, whether they want to learn about system-level design for complex embedded systems in a general way or zoom in on the specific methodologies that the authors discuss. After Chapter 1 introduces the main issues in embedded-systems design and scopes out the rest of the book, Chapter 2 discusses embedded-SoC applications in more detail, paying particular attention to the trends and developments in application characteristics that have made the design of such devices a focus for modern SoCs. Chapter 3 classifies the major elements that make up a multiprocessor platform from the architectural perspective, including processing elements, on-chip communication elements, and NoC architectures. Chapter 4 discusses a set of basic principles in system-level design, including PBD, design phases, computation models, and object-vs.-actor-oriented design. Chapter 5 provides an extensive survey of related work, stretching across many of the major industry and research initiatives of the past decade and beyond. As the authors state in the summary of this chapter, ‘‘one can