Macrocell Design for Concurrent Signal Processing

The term “macrocell”, used in the context of large-scale integrated circuit design, has had a variety of meanings in the past. There is now general agreement that macrocells have the following properties: 1.A macrocell is large, larger than for example a cell from a typical standard cell library. The macrocells to be described here range in complexity from several hundred to ten thousand transistors.2.Macrocells have sufficient internal functionality, and a sufliciently small need for external communication, that they may be assembled into a circuit using general placement and routing techniques with acceptable area efficiency.3.When a macrocell, stored in a library, is called into use by the designer, there will in general be parameters and options. This optimizes the macrocell to its particular application.