Integrated hardware-software co-synthesis and high-level synthesis for design of embedded systems under power and latency constraints

This paper presents an integrated approach to hardware-software co-synthesis and HLS for design of low-power embedded systems. The main motivation for this work is that fine trade-offs between latency and power can be explored at the system level only with a detailed knowledge of used hardware resources. Integrated method was realized as a simulated annealing based solution-space exploration. Exploration is guided by Performance Models, that exactly capture the relationship between performances i.e. power consumption and latency and design decisions i.e. binding and scheduling. The proposed approach permits not only a more accurate latency and power estimation but also the exposure of RTL-level design decisions at the system level. As a result, more effective power-latency trade-offs are possible during co-synthesis as compared to traditional task-level methods.