Published By National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Issued over 9 years ago
Summary
Description
<p>System on a chip is a method to increase engineering efficiency. State of the art components are increasing in gate count as expected according to Moore&rsquo;s law. In the past, a single engineer could write all of the code that would be placed into a smaller programmable component. As component density has increased, it now typically takes several engineers to develop a single chip. In the near future, design modularity and design reuse will be required to maintain engineering efficiency.</p><p>System on a chip allows NASA to develop or buy a library of functions which can be stitched together using a common interconnect bus. This promotes code reuse and greatly increases the speed at which a large, complex design can be developed. The direct benefits are efficiency and remaining competitive. This design methodology paves the way for the final goal of developing a complete spacecraft on a chip.</p><p>The goal of this project is to lay the key groundwork for being able to build a complete spacecraft on a chip.</p>