SPECIFICATION AND DESIGN OF EMBEDDED HARDWARE-SOFTWARE SYSTEMS

Embedded-system specification and design consists of describing a syst em's desired functionality and mapping that functionality for implemen tation by a set of system components such as processors, ASICs, memori es, and buses. This tutorial discusses the key problems of system spec ification and design, including specification capture, design explorat ion, hierarchical modeling, software and hardware synthesis, and cosim ulation. The authors highlight existing tools and methods for solving those problems and describe a ''specify-explore-refine'' methodology f or meeting today's embedded-system product development requirements.