Service Dependency Graph, an Efficient Model for Hardware/Software Interfaces Modeling and Generation for SoC Design
Résumé
Complex systems-on-chip are designed by interconnecting predesigned hardware and software components. During the design cycle, a global model of the SoC may be composed of hardware and software models at different abstraction levels. Designing hardware/software interfaces to interconnect SoC component is a source of design bottlenecks. This paper describes a service-based model enabling systematic design and co-simulation of hardware/software interfaces for SoC design. This model, called Service dependency graph (SDG) allows modeling of complex, customized (application-specific) interfaces. We also present a model generator that can automatically build hardware/software interfaces based on service and resource requirements described by the SDG. This approach has been applied successfully on the design of an MPEG-4 encoder. The results show the effectiveness of the proposed approach in modeling complex interfaces. Additionally the SDG seems to be an excellent intermediate representation for the design automation of hardware software interfaces.