FPGA based SoC Design of an Ultra-Fast Flash Memory Chip

Executive Summary

Our customer is a privately-held fabless semiconductor company.

 

The FPGA based SoC consisted of NAND Flash Memory Controller, DMA Controller, SDRAM Controller, USB Controller Interface and Host Interface. The Host controller configures various registers to initiate data transfer among SDRAM, NAND Flash memory and USB interface via DMA. As soon as the drive is powered up, data stored in NAND Flash memory (including operating system software) gets transferred to SDRAM. During shut down, data is transferred back to NAND Flash Memory from SDRAM.

The customer was seeking an outsourcing partner that had both the technology and domain expertise. 

eInfochips’ FPGA team took complete ownership of the FPGA based SoC for an ultra-fast flash memory chip. With both ASIC/FPGA and Embedded Systems expertise, eInfochips team successfully designed the architecture and performed testing of the FPGA.

The Customer

Our customer is focused on delivering ultra-fast flash memory chips based products that can be used to quickly boot an entire operating system and biometric fingerprint scanners for portable security. The customer takes full advantage of the 480MB/sec offered by USB 2.0 while using a new technology to reduce wear on the flash memory chips.

The Challenge

  • To define the architecture of a high performance data transfer application using only USB bus powered source

The Solution

eInfochips' ASIC team offered the following RTL Design services:

  • Prepared the architecture, design, test plan and functional coverage goals for various blocks of the chip
  • Performed synthesis, PAR and Timing analysis using Xilinx XC3S1000 device
  • Developed the design and performed functional and gate level verification with 99% functional coverage
  • Tested the SoC along with other components on a dedicated board for data transfer application

The Technology

  • Industry: Consumer Electronics
  • Technology: NAND Flash Memory, USB 2.0 Controller, LPC2212  micro-controller interface, Dual Channel DMA, SDRAM controller
  • Device: Xilinx XC3S1000 (80% Usage)
  • Frequency: 40 MHz
  • Languages:  Verilog
  • Tools:  VerilogXL, NCVerilog, XILINX ISE

The Benefit

  • eInfochips delivered a fully working FPGA based SoC design as per USB 2.0 spec, on time and within budget 
  • The customer saved close to 50% project cost by leveraging eInfochips' offshore model