10

CIRCUIT SYNTHESIS: GENERAL PRINCIPLES

This chapter is a summary of digital system architecture. The general problem dealt with is the synthesis of a digital circuit implementing some given algorithm, in such a way that a set of conditions related to the costs and the delays are satisfied. The costs to be taken into account could be

• the number of cells in the case of an application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) or a field programmable gate array (FPGA),
• the number of integrated circuits if standard components are used.

There are other costs, among them those related to the circuit packages, such as

• the number of pins of the integrated circuits,
• the electric power consumption.

The most important timing conditions concern the data input and output operations, among others,

• the maximum delay between the input of a data set and the output of the result (latency),
• the maximum sample frequency (throughput).