The Universal Design Methodology is a well-defined process you can use to plan and design ASICs, FPGAs, and other digital systems.
Universal Design Methodology (UDM) is a structured method for planning and designing hardware. UDM can be used to design ASICs, FPGAs, CPLDs, and PCBs, in large or small organizations. While some differences occur in designing different hardware types, the basic technique remains the same.
UDM will help you to:
- Design a device that’s free from manufacturing defects, that works reliably over the device’s lifetime and that functions correctly in your system.
- Design the device efficiently, using the least amount of time and resources, including personnel.
- Plan the design efficiently by creating a reasonable schedule that allows you to understand all necessary resources and allocate them early in the design process.
UDM specifies steps (shown in Figure 1) that enable you to reach these goals. The specifics of each step vary among particular designs and technologies, but the steps remain essentially the same. By understanding each step, you’ll understand how to schedule and allocate resources.
Note that the process is nonlinear. At various steps, you’ll discover bugs in the design and problems with your specification, which will require you to fix them and backtrack in the process.
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