System-level design: Orthogonalization of concerns and platform-based design

System-level design issues become critical as implementation technology evo lves toward increasingly complex integrated circuits and the time to-market pressure continues relentlessly. To cope with these issues, new methodolog ies that emphasize re-use at all levels of abstraction are a "must", and th is is a major focus of our work in the Gigascale Silicon Research Center. W e present some important concepts for system design that are likely to prov ide at least some of the gains in productivity postulated above. In particu lar, we focus on a method that separates parts of the design process and ma kes them nearly independent so that complexity could be mastered. In this d omain, architecture-function co-design and communication-based design are i ntroduced and motivated. Platforms are essential elements of this design pa radigm. We define system platforms and we argue about their use and relevan ce. Then we present an application of the design methodology to the design of wireless systems. Finally, we present a new approach to platform-based d esign called modern embedded systems, compilers, architectures and language s, based on highly concurrent and software-programmable architectures and a ssociated design tools.