As the complexity of modern embedded systems increases, it becomes less practical to design monolithic processing platforms. As a result, reconfigurable computing is being adopted widely for more flexible design. Reconfigurable Computers offer the spatial parallelism and fine-grained customizability of application-specific circuits with the postfabrication programmability of software. To make the most of this unique combination of performance and flexibility, designers need to be aware of both hardware and software issues. FPGA users must think not only about the gates needed to perform a computation but also about the software flow that supports the design process. The goal of this book is to help designers become comfortable with these issues, and thus be able to exploit the vast opportunities possible with reconfigurable logic.

Application hardware-software co-design for reconfigurable computing systems.

Concurrent design, or co-design of hardware and software is extremely important for meeting design goals, such as high performance, that are the key to commercial competitiveness. Hardware/Software Co-Design covers many aspects of the subject, including methods and examples for designing: (1) general purpose and embedded computing systems based on instruction set processors; (2) telecommunication systems using general purpose digital signal processors as well as application specific instruction set processors; (3) embedded control systems and applications to automotive electronics. The book also surveys the areas of emulation and prototyping systems with field programmable gate array technologies, hardware/software synthesis and verification, and industrial design trends. Most contributions emphasize the design methodology, the requirements and state of the art of computer aided co-design tools, together with current design examples.

This title serves as an introduction ans reference for the field, with the papers that have shaped the hardware/software co-design since its inception in the early 90s.

This is a practical book for computer engineers who want to understand or implement hardware/software systems. It focuses on problems that require one to combine hardware design with software design – such problems can be solved with hardware/software codesign. When used properly, hardware/software co- sign works better than hardware design or software design alone: it can improve the overall performance of digital systems, and it can shorten their design time. Hardware/software codesign can help a designer to make trade-offs between the ?exibility and the performanceof a digital system. To achieve this, a designer needs to combine two radically different ways of design: the sequential way of dec- position in time, using software, with the parallel way of decomposition in space, using hardware. Intended Audience This book assumes that you have a basic understandingof hardware that you are - miliar with standard digital hardware componentssuch as registers, logic gates, and components such as multiplexers and arithmetic operators. The book also assumes that you know how to write a program in C. These topics are usually covered in an introductory course on computer engineering or in a combination of courses on digital design and software engineering.

Introduction to Hardware-Software Co-Design presents a number of issues of fundamental importance for the design of integrated hardware software products such as embedded, communication, and multimedia systems. This book is a comprehensive introduction to the fundamentals of hardware/software co-design. Co-design is still a new field but one which has substantially matured over the past few years. This book, written by leading international experts, covers all the major topics including: fundamental issues in co-design; hardware/software co-synthesis algorithms; prototyping and emulation; target architectures; compiler techniques; specification and verification; system-level specification. Special chapters describe in detail several leading-edge co-design systems including Cosyma, LYCOS, and Cosmos. Introduction to Hardware-Software Co-Design contains sufficient material for use by teachers and students in an advanced course of hardware/software co-design. It also contains extensive explanation of the fundamental concepts of the subject and the necessary background to bring practitioners up-to-date on this increasingly important topic.