Patent · US Expired

Hardware-software co-synthesis of embedded system architectures using quality of architecture metrics

US6178542A · kind A · utility

45Cited by
11References
27Claims
0Family size

Assignee

Inventor

Key dates

Filing dateFeb 17, 1998
Grant dateJan 23, 2001
Priority date
Expiry dateFeb 17, 2018

Classification

  • Technology area (CPC Y)Emerging Cross-Sectional Technologies
  • CPC primaryY02D10/00
  • WIPO fieldComputer technology
  • WIPO sectorElectrical engineering

Abstract

Hardware-software co-synthesis is the process of partitioning an embedded system specification into hardware and software modules to meet performance, power, and cost goals. Embedded systems are generally specified in terms of a set of acyclic task graphs. According to one embodiment of the present invention, a co-synthesis algorithm, called COSYN, starts with periodic task graphs with real-time constraints and produces a low-cost heterogeneous distributed embedded system architecture meeting these constraints. The algorithm has the following features: 1) it allows the use of multiple types of processing elements (PEs) and inter-PE communication links, where the links can take various forms (point-to-point, bus, local area network, etc.), 2) it supports both concurrent and sequential modes of communication and computation, 3) it employs a combination of preemptive and non-preemptive scheduling, 4) it introduces the concept of an association array to tackle the problem of multi-rate systems (which are commonly found in multimedia applications), 5) it uses a static scheduler based on deadline-based priority levels for accurate performance estimation of a co-synthesis solution, 6) it …

Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.