AGOM: A Novel Method of Embedded System Communication Architecture Design in System Level Design

Communication architecture design is a key issue of hardware/software co-design. This paper presents a novel architecture design method, called architecture generation and optimization method (AGOM) to assist embedded system designers to construct optimized on-chip communication architectures (OOCAs). The method outlines a new system design framework to achieve an application-specification architecture exploration process. Under its guide, chip designers can easily synthesize the desired communication structure by the approach of model refinement from one level of abstraction down to another closer to implementation. To automate the key steps of the method, this paper also provides communication synthesis algorithms of architectures generation and optimization based on a pre-partitioned hardware/software specification. During the architecture exploration process, the approach takes into account bus widths, bus load, cost for arbitration logic and transducers to achieve a fine trade-off between system delay and area. The correctness and effectiveness of the method is evaluated through an illustrative JPEG application