Customer Value-based HW/SW Partitioning Decision in Embedded Systems

In launching a product, requirement change is always risk to an embedded system designer. Including requirements change, limited resources (e.g. development time and cost) are also risk factors to designing a system. However, the time to market constraint among several limitations is most critical especially to embedded system products (e.g. cellular phone, PDA, etc.). For that reason, many strategy makers try to find effective way to a HW/SW partitioning decision in early designing phase. Only ideal way to reduce requirements change and satisfy customers is reflecting their value to decision making steps in early phase prior to fixing HW and SW component design. In this paper, Customer Value based Partitioning Decision (CVPD) method is proposed to identify, analyze, and calculate the value of the customerspsila requirements, reflecting the value on the partitioning decision making process.