Macrocell design techniques that ease system level ASIC integration

With the tremendous advances in process technology, ASIC integration capability has reached new levels that allow for developing complete systems on a chip, or system level ASICs. However, just because the silicon capabilities allow for these system level ASICs, there are a number of other capabilities that are required to successfully implement these designs. One such capability is the use of macrocells functions to increase the level of integration. This paper discusses the challenges in designing macrocell functions to ease the ASIC integration process and some of the approaches used by the Microelectronics Group at Lucent Technologies (formerly AT&T Microelectronics) to overcome these challenges.