Embedded tutorial: hardware/software codesign

Due to the advance of VLSI technology, it is now possible to fabricate very complicated systems on a chip, which includes CPUs, peripheral circuits, and on-chip memories. These kinds of chips are very effective to implement various electronic systems such as for multimedia processing, communication, and real-time control. However there is a serious problem, called “design productivity crisis”, to be overcome in the near future. Hardware/Software Codesign (“codesign” in short) is a most promising design methodology to achieve much higher design productivity compared to conventional methods. This embedded tutorial introduces current status and future trends of the codesign methodology. In the presentation, trends of VLSI technology and the background behind the design productivity crisis are analyzed. Then, an “ideal codesign environment” is proposed, and the fundamental technologies to realize such an ideal codesign environment are categorized. Next, some of the codesign systems developed so far are introduced along with the case studies. Finally, future issues to realize the ideal codesign system are discussed