Co-Synthesis of Hardware and Software for Digital Embedded Systems

Book excerpt: Co-Synthesis of Hardware and Software for Digital Embedded Systems, with a Foreword written by Giovanni De Micheli, presents techniques that are useful in building complex embedded systems. These techniques provide a competitive advantage over purely hardware or software implementations of time-constrained embedded systems. Recent advances in chip-level synthesis have made it possible to synthesize application-specific circuits under strict timing constraints. This work advances the state of the art by formulating the problem of system synthesis using both application-specific as well as reprogrammable components, such as off-the-shelf processors. Timing constraints are used to determine what part of the system functionality must be delegated to dedicated application-specific hardware while the rest is delegated to software that runs on the processor. This co-synthesis of hardware and software from behavioral specifications makes it possible to realize real-time embedded systems using off-the-shelf parts and a relatively small amount of application-specific circuitry that can be mapped to semi-custom VLSI such as gate arrays. The ability to perform detailed analysis of timing performance provides the opportunity of improving the system definition by creating better phototypes. Co-Synthesis of Hardware and Software for Digital Embedded Systems is of interest to CAD researchers and developers who want to branch off into the expanding field of hardware/software co-design, as well as to digital system designers who are interested in the present power and limitations of CAD techniques and their likely evolution.