PROTOTYPING OF TIGHTLY COUPLED HARDWARE SOFTWARE-SYSTEMS/

Verification and test issues raise the need for rapid prototyping of c omplex systems and especially hardware/software-systems. We tackle thi s problem by integration of hardware/software-codesign and prototyping . First we define the concept of the entire system architecture. This concept directs the hardware/software-partitioning process. Our protot yping environment reflects the architecture concept as well. In this o verview the architecture concept and all important design tasks (hardw are/software-partitioning, speed-up estimation before HW-synthesis, an d prototyping of the entire hardware/software-system) are presented an d compared to several approaches from literature. Thus a substantial o verview over the prototyping problem is given. The latter part of this presentation illustrates our approach by a case study and presents th e results. Our automated design process generates a tightly coupled ha rdware/software-system with very good performance characteristics. The case study focus on the prototyping of a ciphering algorithm. The rep orted approach leads to a reasonable overall system speed-up of 10%. S imilar results have been found for further examples as well.