Digital Architectures and Systems: An Overview

Progress in CMOS VLSI technology scaling, as per Moore's law, has led to faster and efficient digital ICS (integrated circuits). There are a variety of digital ICS, such as: microprocessors (general purpose processors), microcontrollers (microprocessors with some built-in modules, for quick prototyping), application specific microprocessors, programmable logic circuits, FPGAs (field programmable gate arrays), custom ASICs (application specific integrated circuits), etc. Some of these ICS are high-speed, but less flexible (less programmability), whereas, some ICS are highly-flexible (more programmability) but moderate-speed. Many of these ICS(either single processor or multiple-parallel-processors), are present in the electronic devices that we use daily at home, and also in the high-end digital computing systems/platforms that are used for scientific research and large-scale applications (designing, simulations, and implementations), which are computation intensive and memory intensive.