Report Number: CSL-TR-92-548
Institution: Stanford University, Computer Systems Laboratory
Title: System synthesis via hardware-software co-design
Author: Gupta, Rajesh K.
Author: DeMicheli, Giovanni
Date: October 1992
Abstract: Synthesis of circuits containing application-specific as well as re-programmable components such as off-the-shelf microprocessors provides a promising approach to realization of complex systems using a minimal amount of application-specific hardware while still meeting the required performance constraints. We formulate the synthesis problem of complex behavioral descriptions with performance constraints as a hardware-software co-design problem. The target system architecture consists of a software component as a program running on a re-programmable processor assisted by application-specific hardware components. System synthesis is performed by first partitioning the input system description into hardware and software portions and then by implementing each of them separately. We consider the problem of identifying potential hardware and software components of a system described in a high-level modeling language. Partitioning approaches are presented based on decoupling of data and control flow, and based on communication/synchronization requirements of the resulting system design. Synchronization between various elements of a mixed system design is one of the key issues that any synthesis system must address. We present software and interface synchronization schemes that facilitate communication between system components. We explore the relationship between the non-determinism in the system models and the associated synchronization schemes needed in system implementations. The synthesis of dedicated hardware is achieved by hardware synthesis tools, while the software component is generated using software compiling techniques. We present tools to perform synthesis of a system description into hardware and software components. The resulting software component is assumed to be implemented for the DLX machine, a load/store microprocessor. We present design of an ethernet based network coprocessor to demonstrate the feasibility of mixed system synthesis.
http://i.stanford.edu/pub/cstr/reports/csl/tr/92/548/CSL-TR-92-548.pdf