The engineering of supersystems

An everyday mobile phone contains two to four processors executing several hundred million instructions per second (MIPS) in closely coupled or networked configurations that implement the mobile modem as software on a single digital signal processor (DSP). The base stations controlling wireless and wireline communications systems are themselves a hierarchy of closely coupled systems with multiprocessor (typically DSP) subsystems executing billions of instructions per second. A complete base station can incorporate from five to 20 subsystems and 100 separate processors. These supersystems, incorporating possibly dozens of processors in closely coupled or networked topologies, pose a design challenge at least equal to that of designing the component systems and processors. Supersystem design and verification must address hardware complexity that increases with each successive generation of a product family, as well as embedded software content that increases exponentially with time.