Hardware/software co-design methodology for design of embedded systems

This paper presents the main co-design concepts of distributed embedded hardware/software systems through a detailed presentation of a methodology and an environment for codesign. This presentation gives a comprehensive description of different codesign steps using a codesign of a realistic example: Real-Time Acquisition and Storage Controller acting between analog signals and storage disk. Design starts from a system-level specification and performs hardware/software partitioning, communication synthesis and architecture generation. To produce an efficient solution, the codesign process is guided by performance and constraints that depend on the application context.