Hardware-software codesign with GRAPE

GRAPE-II (Graphical Rapid Prototyping Environment-II) is a hardware-software codesign environment for the real-time functional emulation of synchronous DSP systems. It allows one to specify the application´s data dependency graph in a target-machine-independent way. After specifying the heterogeneous target machine´s architecture, it estimates the resources needed by each application subtask. Based on these requirements, it assigns the subtasks to specific target devices at compile-time, be they processors or FPGAs, establishes routing paths and determines a static schedule. It generates a main shell for each target device and generates intra-device and inter-device communication code. After downloading the executable images on to the target machine, it allows the designer to modify end-user controls and application settings at run-time. This paper situates the tool in the application design cycle, explains GRAPE-II´s design flow and shows the advantages of hardware-software codesign by evaluating the achievable sampling frequency for a small example application