Conclusions and Future Perspectives

Abstract

The current design practice for system-on-chip is RTL (register transfer level) design with a late integration of hardware and software. Its shortcomings are inefficient design, long design cycles, over-design of the hardware, etc. Most recently designers have started to adopt virtual prototypes in practice. These help with earlier integration leading to a better software and earlier availability and improved design. However, this phase adds many man months of effort to a typical project and has the following disadvantages: still requires long simulation time; the architecture details are not necessary for the design of all types of software components; it is difficult to identify the different sources of the software bugs.