Current practice dictates the separation of the hardware and software development paths early in the design cycle. These paths remain independent with very little interaction occurring between them until system integration. In particular, hardware is often specified without fully appreciating the computational requirements of the software. Also, software development does not influence hardware development and does not track changes made during the hardware design phase. Thus, the ability to explore hardware/software tradeoffs is restricted, such as the movement of functionality from the software domain to the hardware domain (and vice-versa) or the modification of the hardware/software interface. As a result, problems that are encountered during system integration may require modification of the software and/or hardware, resulting in potentially significant cost increases and schedule overruns. To address the problems described above, a cooperative design approach, one that utilizes a unified view of hardware and software, is described. This approach is called hardware/software codesign. The Codesign of Embedded Systems develops several fundamental hardware/software codesign concepts and a methodology that supports them. A unified representation, referred to as a decomposition graph, is presented which can be used to describe hardware or software using either functional abstractions or data abstractions. Using a unified representation based on functional abstractions, an abstract hardware/software model has been implemented in a common simulation environment called ADEPT (Advanced Design Environment Prototyping Tool). This model permits early hardware/software evaluation and tradeoff exploration. Techniques have been developed which support the identification of software bottlenecks and the evaluation of design alternatives with respect to multiple metrics. The application of the model is demonstrated on several examples. A unified representation based on data abstractions is also explored. This work leads to investigations regarding the application of object-oriented techniques to hardware design. The Codesign of Embedded Systems: A Unified Hardware/Software Representation describes a novel approach to a topic of immense importance to CAD researchers and designers alike.

Current practice dictates the separation of the hardware and software development paths early in the design cycle. These paths remain independent with very little interaction occurring between them until system integration. In particular, hardware is often specified without fully appreciating the computational requirements of the software. Also, software development does not influence hardware development and does not track changes made during the hardware design phase. Thus, the ability to explore hardware/software tradeoffs is restricted, such as the movement of functionality from the software domain to the hardware domain (and vice-versa) or the modification of the hardware/software interface. As a result, problems that are encountered during system integration may require modification of the software and/or hardware, resulting in potentially significant cost increases and schedule overruns. To address the problems described above, a cooperative design approach, one that utilizes a unified view of hardware and software, is described. This approach is called hardware/software codesign. The Codesign of Embedded Systems develops several fundamental hardware/software codesign concepts and a methodology that supports them. A unified representation, referred to as a decomposition graph, is presented which can be used to describe hardware or software using either functional abstractions or data abstractions. Using a unified representation based on functional abstractions, an abstract hardware/software model has been implemented in a common simulation environment called ADEPT (Advanced Design Environment Prototyping Tool). This model permits early hardware/software evaluation and tradeoff exploration. Techniques have been developed which support the identification of software bottlenecks and the evaluation of design alternatives with respect to multiple metrics. The application of the model is demonstrated on several examples. A unified representation based on data abstractions is also explored. This work leads to investigations regarding the application of object-oriented techniques to hardware design. The Codesign of Embedded Systems: A Unified Hardware/Software Representation describes a novel approach to a topic of immense importance to CAD researchers and designers alike.

This book introduces a modern approach to embedded system design, presenting software design and hardware design in a unified manner. It covers trends and challenges, introduces the design and use of single-purpose processors ("hardware") and general-purpose processors ("software"), describes memories and buses, illustrates hardware/software tradeoffs using a digital camera example, and discusses advanced computation models, controls systems, chip technologies, and modern design tools. For courses found in EE, CS and other engineering departments.

Object-oriented techniques and languages have been proven to significantly increase engineering efficiency in software development. Many benefits are expected from their introduction into electronic modeling. Among them are better support for model reusability and flexibility, more efficient system modeling, and more possibilities in design space exploration and prototyping. Object-Oriented Modeling explores the latest techniques in object-oriented methods, formalisms and hardware description language extensions. The seven chapters comprising this book provide an overview of the latest object-oriented techniques for designing systems and hardware. Many examples are given in C++, VHDL and real-time programming languages. Object-Oriented Modeling describes further the use of object-oriented techniques in applications such as embedded systems, telecommunications and real-time systems, using the very latest techniques in object-oriented modeling. It is an essential guide to researchers, practitioners and students involved in software, hardware and system design.

This textbook serves as an introduction to the subject of embedded systems design, with emphasis on integration of custom hardware components with software. The key problem addressed in the book is the following: how can an embedded systems designer strike a balance between flexibility and efficiency? The book describes how combining hardware design with software design leads to a solution to this important computer engineering problem. The book covers four topics in hardware/software codesign: fundamentals, the design space of custom architectures, the hardware/software interface and application examples. The book comes with an associated design environment that helps the reader to perform experiments in hardware/software codesign. Each chapter also includes exercises and further reading suggestions. Improvements in this second edition include labs and examples using modern FPGA environments from Xilinx and Altera, which will make the material in this book applicable to a greater number of courses where these tools are already in use. More examples and exercises have been added throughout the book. “If I were teaching a course on this subject, I would use this as a resource and text. If I were a student who wanted to learn codesign, I would look for a course that at least used a similar approach. If I were an engineer or engineering manager who wanted to learn more about codesign from a very practical perspective, I would read this book first before any other. When I first started learning about codesign as a practitioner, a book like this would have been the perfect introduction.” --Grant Martin, Tensilica--

Introduces different tasks of hardware/software co-design, including system specification, hardware/software partitioning, co-synthesis, and co-simulation. Summarizes and classifies co-design tools and methods for these tasks, and presents the co-design tool COOL, useful for solving co-design tasks for the class of data-flow dominated embedded systems. Primary emphasis is on hardware/software partitioning and the co-synthesis phase and their coupling. A mathematical formulation of the hardware/software partitioning problem is given, and several novel approaches are presented and compared for solving the partitioning problem. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR