Hardware/software codesign for FPGA-based systems

A new codesign compiler called Dash (Design Automation for Software and Hardware) provides a co-synthesis and co-simulation environment for mixed FPGA/processor architectures. It compiles a C-like description to a solution containing both processors and custom hardware, and allows the descriptions of FPGA-based processors to be heavily parametrised. The user may add instructions to the processors, and the Dash software architecture allows the user to add facilities for targeting these extra instructions to the compiler. This system is being used to design a number of case studies, and a single-chip codesign of an Internet video game is used to illustrate the design flow.