March 15, 2007 -- The development of austriamicrosystems’ second-generation multimedia platform and its derivative products exemplifies the advantages that an SIP (system-in-package) product can offer over an SOC (system on chip).

The design team created performance-critical IP (intellectual-property) blocks and used IP blocks from outside vendors to speed the development and to reduce the costs of such a complex undertaking. The team carefully chose the criteria for selecting and purchasing IP and encountered several problems with the integration of some IP blocks.

Many CAD tools contributed to the development, but there are still development tasks, especially in the area of hardware/software co-design and in the design of the SIP, that commercially available tools cannot handle. Close cooperation between the hardware team and the software team was necessary to obtain optimal performance from the products. In addition, the team considered design-for-test and design-for-manufacturability issues early in the development cycle.

By Mario Manninger. ( Manninger is director of engineering in the communications business unit austriamicrosystems AG)