Lesson plan
BACPAC
BACPAC, or the Berkeley Advanced Chip Performance Calculator, is a software program to explore the effect of changes in IC technology. The use enters a set of fairly fundamental properties of the technology (such as interconnect layer thickness, and logic depth) and the program estimates the system level performance of an IC built with these assumptions. Previous work in this area can be found in and, but these do not consider many of the effects of deep-sub-micrometre interconnect. BACPAC is based on the work in. BACPAC uses analytical approximations for system properties such as delay and interconnect requirements. The intent is not absolute accuracy for a given design, but to show trends and effects of technology changes.
Article summary
BACPAC, or the Berkeley Advanced Chip Performance Calculator, is a software program to explore the effect of changes in IC technology. The use enters a set of fairly fundamental properties of the technology (such as interconnect layer thickness, and logic depth) and the program estimates the system level performance of an IC built with these assumptions. Previous work in this area can be found in and, but these do not consider many of the effects of deep-sub-micrometre interconnect. BACPAC is based on the work in. BACPAC uses analytical approximations for system properties such as delay and interconnect requirements. The intent is not absolute accuracy for a given design, but to show trends and effects of technology changes.
Key claims
No claims recorded.
Discussion questions
- Summarise the article in your own words. Which single claim would you verify first, and why?
- Which claim in this article is most likely to be revised as the sources update? How would you check its current status?
- If two sources disagreed about one of these facts, what would you need in order to trust one over the other?
Bibliography
No sources recorded.
Key claims and bibliography are generated from the same tracked claims and sources as the article page.