Virtual prototyping for modular and flexible hardware-software systems
Résumé
The goal of the work is to develop a methodology for fast prototyping of highly modular and flexible electronic systems, including both software and hardware. The main contribution of the work is the ability to handle a wide range of architectures. We assume that hardware/software partitioning is already made. This stage of the codesign process starts with a virtual prototype, an heterogeneous architecture composed of a set of distributed modules, represented in VHDL for hardware elements and in C for software elements, communicating through communication modules. The work concentrates on a modelling strategy that allows a virtual prototype to be used for both cosynthesis (mapping hardware and software modules onto an architectural platform) and cosimulation (joint simulation of hardware and software components) into a unified environment. The main contribution is the use of a multi view library concept in order to hide specific hardware/software implementation details and communication schemes. In particular this approach addresses the problem of communication between the hardware and software modules.
Mots clés
virtual-prototyping
flexible-hardware-software-systems
fast-prototyping
flexible-electronic-systems
hardware-software-partitioning
codesign-process
virtual-prototype
heterogeneous-architecture
distributed-modules
VHDL-
hardware-elements
software-elements
communication-modules
modelling-strategy
cosynthesis-
architectural-platform
cosimulation-
joint-simulation
unified-environment
multi-view-library-concept