The message that Mark is sending to the chip and SoC design houses is that the designs they are putting together are most likely not the optimal solutions for what applications the customers have in mind. Instead, he would prefer if these companies instead of trying to guess what the customers want should rather put their efforts into developing a chip generator that would allow the eventual consumer to configure the final SoC as needed. Want half the cache: no problem - want to eliminate some not needed IOs: no sweat - need to configure your memory differently to optimize the performance, or add some extra math processing: no sweat. Essentially, let the customer figure out what they need, and you just focus on developing a tool that will put it together for them. I have to admit Mark, this does sound fantastic indeed. As a matter of fact, it is something that occurred to me a while ago while working on several SoCs that were very similar, but not similar enough for some of our customers, and thus required separate design spins. The problem is that while the chip generator might be more feasible than a silicon compiler, it is still something immensely difficult to pull off.
The Pocket Moleskine
Mark Horowitz: the SoC future is a chip generator
