A hardware/software partitioner using a dynamically determined granularity
DAC '97 Proceedings of the 34th annual Design Automation Conference
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The practice of concurrent hardware-software design can significantly cut the cost and cycle time to build digital systems for embedded real-time applications. The traditional "hardware first, software last" development process has proven difficult and costly. The biggest problems are traceable to disconnects in the hardware and software partitioning discovered during integration and test, after hardware fabrication. Late discovery of these errors causes projects to be over budget and late. Worse, the resulting system may not fully satisfy user needs.Under a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Initiative in Concurrent Engineering program, TRW developed a process, supported by a tool, in which we developed hardware and software incrementally and concurrently, validate requirements in simulation before fabricating any hardware, and we fully interconnect the path from initial design through manufacturing with computer-aided design (CAD) tools.