Rapid Prototyping of Complex HW/SW Systems using a Timing and Power Aware ESL Framework

Abstract

Consideration of an embedded system’s timing behaviour and power consumption at system-level is increasingly important nowadays but it is also an ambitious task. Sophisticated tools and techniques exist for power and timing estimations of individual components such as custom hard- and software as well as IP components. But prediction of the composed system behaviour can hardly be made.In this paper we present the concept of an ESL framework for timing and power aware rapid virtual system prototyping of embedded HW/SWsystems. Our proposed flow combines system-level timing and power estimation techniques available in commercial tools with platform-based rapid prototyping. Our proposal aims at the generation of executable virtual prototypes from a functional C/C$++$ specification. These prototypes are enriched by static and dynamic power values as well as execution times. This efficient code annotation technique enables a fast host simulation and allows a trade-off between different platforms, mapping alternatives, and optimization techniques, based on domain-specific workload scenarios. The proposed flow will be implemented in the COMPLEXFP7 European integrated project.