Design and optimization of networked wireless information systems

As entire systems are being integrated on a single chip, the chip designers are in effect becoming the system designers. However, it is an open question whether the board-level system architecture design and optimization methodologies are also well-suited for such system-chips. Our experience with the networked wireless multimedia nodes and devices being designed under UCLA’s MERLIN project shows that the system-chip design problem is not just one of complexity and scalability arising from a large number of transistors. Instead, the primary problem and opportunity is in managing the diversity in a system, and exploiting it to optimize the system architecture. Indeed, the ability to do design trade-offs and optimizations across diverse system layers and functions being integrated on a die is crucial. Facilitatin