August 6, 2009 -- Consumers have come to expect—and even demand—the full benefits of the convergence between computing, communications, and digital-media technologies that we've all been predicting for the past 15 years. OEMs therefore produce a bewildering array of advanced electronic systems in a variety of form factors, feature sets, and prices to fulfill consumer desires. SOC (system-on-chip) devices enable much of this convergence by integrating increasing amounts of performance at acceptably low costs.

Although many differences exist between the processing requirements of the computing, communications, and digital-media components in converged SOCs, one commonality is the reliance upon external memories, particularly DRAMs (dynamic random-access memories), to provide high-bandwidth storage for data that the SOC processes. For many consumer SOCs, the performance and cost of the overall system depend upon the efficiency of the communications between the SOC and the attached DRAM. This dependence is particularly strong in SOCs that process high-definition digital-video streams, such as HDTVs (high-definition televisions), digital-cable or satellite STBs (set-top boxes), DSCs (digital still cameras) and camcorders, and advanced multimedia and smart mobile telephones.

By Drew E Wingard, Ph.D. (Wingard is a co-founded Sonics, Inc. and Chief Technical Officer.)