Efficient heuristic and tabu search for hardware/software partitioning

Hardware/software (HW/SW) partitioning is a crucial step in HW/SW codesign that determines which components of the system are implemented on hardware and which ones on software. It has been proved that the HW/SW partitioning problem is NP-hard. In this paper, we present two approaches for HW/SW partitioning that aims to minimize the hardware cost while taking into account software and communication constraints. The first is a heuristic approach that treats the HW/SW partitioning problem as an extended 0–1 knapsack problem. In the second approach, tabu search is used to further improve the solution obtained from the proposed heuristic algorithm. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithms outperform a recently reported work by up to 28 %.     

A hardware/software partitioning algorithm based on artificial immune principles

Hardware/software codesign is the main approach to designing the embedded systems. One of the primary steps of the hardware/software codesign is the hardware/software partitioning. A good partitioning scheme is a tradeoff of some constraints, such as power, size, performance, and so on. Inspired by both negative selection model and evolutionary mechanism of the biological immune system, an evolutionary negative selection algorithm for hardware/software partitioning, namely ENSA-HSP, is proposed in this paper. This ENSA-HSP algorithm is proved to be convergent, and its ability to escape from the local optimum is also analyzed. The experimental results demonstrate that ENSA-HSP is more efficient than traditional evolutionary algorithm.     

嵌入式系统软硬件自动划分方法研究

软硬件划分一直是嵌入式系统软硬件协同设计中的难点,如果离开具体系统,单纯的软硬件划分,其性能很难评估。本文提出基于系统体系结构,应用遗传算法来进行多目标优化的软硬件自动划分方法。在具体设计中,使用数据流图对系统建模,采用邻接表进行个体编码,定义交叉、变异操作,同时引入小生境技术,保持解的多样性。该方法为嵌入式系统软硬件自动划分提供一种新思路。     

Hardware/Software Partitioning Using Bayesian Belief Networks

In heterogeneous system design, partitioning of the functional specifications into hardware (HW) and software (SW) components is an important procedure. Often, an HW platform is chosen, and the SW is mapped onto the existing partial solution, or the actual partitioning is performed in an ad hoc manner. The partitioning approach presented is novel in that it uses Bayesian belief networks (BBNs) to categorize functional components into HW and SW classifications. The BBNpsilas ability to propagate evidence permits the effects of a classification decision that is made about one function to be felt throughout the entire network. In addition, because BBNs have a belief of hypotheses as their core, a quantitative measurement as to the correctness of a partitioning decision is achieved. A methodology for automatically generating the qualitative structural portion of BBN and the quantitative link matrices is given. A case study of a programmable thermostat is developed to illustrate the BBN approach. The outcomes of the partitioning process are discussed and placed in a larger design context, which is called model-based codesign.     

Correct hardware synthesis

This paper presents an algebraic compilation approach to the correct synthesis (compilation into hardware) of a synchronous language with shared variables and parallelism. The synthesis process generates a hardware component that implements the source program by means of gradually reducing it into a highly parallel state-machine. The correctness of the compiler follows by construction from the correctness of the transformations involved in the synthesis process. Each transformation is proved sound from more basic algebraic laws of the source language; the laws are themselves formally derived from a denotational semantics expressed in the Unified Theories of Programming. The proposed approach is based on previous efforts that handle both software and hardware compilation, in a pure algebraic style, but the complexity of our source language demanded significant adaptations and extensions to the existing approaches.     

多选择软硬件划分问题的计算模型与动态规划算法

软硬件划分是软硬件协同设计的关键环节,划分的结果直接影响目标系统的设计质量。因此,对于一个给定的应用程序,为了使得目标系统快速执行且成本低廉,合理的划分策略十分重要。由于单个任务具有多种不同的硬件实现方式,与传统的单一硬件实现方式的软硬件划分问题相比,多选择的软硬件划分更能客观地反映现实应用。这导致问题的求解更具挑战性,它们已被证明是NP完全问题。基于多核处理器片上系统并针对任务图为二叉树的应用,建立了多选择软硬件划分问题的计算模型,并提出了解决该问题的动态规划算法。实验结果表明,当问题规模适中时,所提动态规划算法能够有效地获得精确解,并展示了算法的计算能力与硬件面积限制之间的关系。     

A microprogrammed occam interpreter for the HLH orion

A micro-coded interpreter has been written for the occam programming language that runs on the fully microprogrammable HLH Orion mini-computers. The resulting software gives performance which is comparable with native-code operation on similar hardware, and is able to be extended easily to support new instructions as the language is developed further.     

SoC设计中一种软硬件划分的性能评价方法

介绍了一种在SoC系统级设计中对软硬件划分进行评价的方法。系统层设计中，对设计方案的性能、成本和功耗的准确估计，是取得高质量设计的必要条件。讨论了基于平台的设计中，利用基于事务级仿真的方法对系统的软硬件划分结果进行评价的方法。     

软硬件协同设计中的软硬件划分方法综述

近年来,随着信息领域的物联网、工业互联网、机器人等研究热点发展,嵌入式系统技术再次得到科技工作者和工程师的广泛关注和重视,同时嵌入式系统产品的集成度和性能要求越来越高.软硬件协同设计是开发嵌入式系统产品的重要方法之一,而软硬件划分是软硬件协同设计中的关键技术.本文对现有软硬件划分方法从不同层面进行梳理和分类,重点介绍几种常用的软硬件划分方法,并结合实例进行了详细阐述,最后对这几种方法进行综合比较,供嵌入式系统开发科技工作者和工程师参考.     

面向RSoC的过程级动态软硬件划分

软硬件划分作为可重构片上系统设计的重要技术手段,其结果直接影响到系统的性能。目前的软硬件划分大多只考虑从算法本身提高划分效果,忽略了划分结果的具体配置实现,导致划分效果很不理想。分析了预配置模型下的任务描述,给出了预配置调度优先级的计算方法,设计了一种预配置调度策略;针对软硬件划分与动态可重构的特点,提出并实现了一种结合预配置的软硬件划分算法,给出了一种评价软硬件划分方案优劣的方法。实验结果表明,该划分方法具有良好的划分效果。