Formalizing Hardware-Software Codesign Space Exploration

Pao-Ann Hsiung
Institute of Information Science
Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan.
( 10th VLSI Design / CAD Symposium (VLSI/CAD'99), August 1999, Taipei, TAIWAN, ROC.)

Abstract

The hardware-software codesign space exploration process is formalized through a theoretic model based on Linear Hybrid Automata. This formalization not only allows rigorous synthesis, but also produces verifiable designs. Parallelism in hardware and in software are modeled and explored. Design choices occurring in hardware-software interfaces are investigated. Finally, a metric-based selection procedure for codesign alternatives is also proposed.