嵌入式系统软硬件协同验证中软件验证方法

随着集成电路及计算机技术的发展,嵌入式系统设计变得越来越复杂．复杂的嵌入式系统设计,通常采用验证的手段检验系统设计的正确性,硬件验证通常是在硬件设计描述的基础上建立用于模拟硬件功能的硬件模拟器;软件验证常用的方法是建立处理器功能模型(指令集模拟器ISS),逐条解释嵌入式软件在目标机器上的执行过程,产生模拟输出,驱动外围电路(即硬件设计)．指令集模拟器从底层时序关系模拟嵌入式软件在目标CPU上运行过程．对于复杂嵌入式系统设计,ISS模拟速度通常成为协同模拟瓶颈．基于RTOS的嵌入式软件快速验证方法可以有效地提高软件模拟速度,扩展RTOS功能,适应协同模拟需要,建立硬件模拟驱动,实现软件和硬件模拟器通信连接和协同模拟同步控制．基于RTOS的嵌入式软件验证方法以编译代码模型为基础,从系统行为级验证嵌入式软件功能,验证速度快．在实际应用中,该方法和ISS验证相结合,能够实现更有效、更快速的嵌入式系统协同验证．最后以几个典型硬件设计为基础,编写相应的控制软件,进行软硬件协同验证实验,实验结果数据说明该验证方法实用、有效、快速．     

Hardware/software co-design for particle swarm optimization algorithm

This paper presents a hardware/software (HW/SW) co-design approach using SOPC technique and pipeline design method to improve design flexibility and execution performance of particle swarm optimization (PSO) for embedded applications. Based on modular design architecture, a Particle Updating Accelerator module via hardware implementation for updating velocity and position of particles and a Fitness Evaluation module implemented either on a soft-cored processor or Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) for evaluating the objective functions are respectively designed to work closely together to carry out the evolution process at different design stages. Thanks to the design flexibility, the proposed approach can tackle various optimization problems of embedded applications without the need for hardware redesign. To further improve the execution performance of the PSO, a hardware random number generator (RNG) is also designed in this paper in addition to a particle re-initialization scheme to promote exploration search during the optimization process. Experimental results have demonstrated that the proposed HW/SW co-design approach for PSO algorithms has good efficiency for obtaining high-quality solutions for embedded applications.     

A modelling-based methodology for evaluating the performance of a real-time embedded control system

This paper presents a modelling-based methodology for embedded control system (ECS) design. Here, instead of developing a new methodology for ECS design, we propose to upgrade an existing one by bridging it with a methodology used in other areas of embedded systems design. We created a transformation bridge between the control-scheduling and the hardware/software (HW/SW) co-design tools. By defining this bridge, we allow for an automatic model transformation. As a result, we obtain more accurate timing-behaviour simulations, considering not only the real-time software, but also the hardware architecture’s impact on the control performance. We show an example with different model-evaluation results compared to real implementation measurements, which clearly demonstrates the benefits of our approach.     

面向SoC的软硬件协同验证平台设计

针对SoC设计验证的实际需求,介绍一种面向SoC设计的软硬件协同验证平台。平台中软硬件模型分别在不同环境下运行,通过网络实现信息交互。硬件用硬件描述语言实现对系统事务级、RTL级的建模,软件用高级编程语言来编写,使用指令集仿真器完成对硬件的仿真。仿真过程使用不同的进程并行进行,应用进程间通信方式实现仿真器之间的信息交互。     

ECC专用指令处理器软硬件协同设计

提出了一种专用指令处理器的软硬件协同设计方法,该方法可以在设计的早期阶段对处理器进行系统探索和验证.根据椭圆曲线密码算法的特点,并按照专用指令处理器的设计原则,以椭圆曲线密码运算基本操作及运算存储特性为基础,设计了超长指令字ECC专用指令处理器的指令集结构模型.根据处理器的指令集结构模型,以指令模拟器为基础,搭建了处理器的软硬件协同验证平台,从系统设计、RTL描述和FPGA硬件原型3个不同层次对处理器进行了验证.     

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。     

HW/SW co-design for public-key cryptosystems on the 8051 micro-controller

It is a challenge to implement large word length public-key algorithms on embedded systems. Examples are smartcards, RF-ID tags and mobile terminals. This paper presents a HW/SW co-design solution for RSA and Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) over GF(p) on a 12 MHz 8-bit 8051 micro-controller. The hardware coprocessor has a Modular Arithmetic Logic Unit (MALU) of which the digit size (d) is variable. It can be adapted to the speed and bandwidth of the micro-controller to which it is connected. The HW/SW co-design space exploration is based on the GEZEL system-level design environment. It allows the designer to find the best performance-area combination for the digit size. As a case study of an FPGA prototyping, 160-bit ECC over GF(p) (ECC-160p) was implemented on Xilinx Virtex-II PRO (XC2VP30). The results show that one point multiplication takes only 130 ms including all communications between the 8051 and the coprocessor. The performance is 40 times faster than the most optimized SW implementation on a small CPU in literature. This is achieved by the HW/SW co-design exploration in order to find the optimized digit size of the MALU. On the other hand, the design of ECC-160p maintains a high level of flexibility by using coprocessor instructions. Our proposed architecture proves that HW/SW co-design provides a high performance close to ASIC solutions with a flexible feature of SW even on a small CPU.     

A Novel Hardware/Software Partitioning Method Based on Position Disturbed Particle Swarm Optimization with Invasive Weed Optimization

With the development of the design complexity in embedded systems, hardware/software (HW/SW) partitioning becomes a challenging optimization problem in HW/SW co-design. A novel HW/SW partitioning method based on position disturbed particle swarm optimization with invasive weed optimization (PDPSO-IWO) is presented in this paper. It is found by biologists that the ground squirrels produce alarm calls which warn their peers to move away when there is potential predatory threat. Here, we present PDPSO algorithm, in each iteration of which the squirrel behavior of escaping from the global worst particle can be simulated to increase population diversity and avoid local optimum. We also present new initialization and reproduction strategies to improve IWO algorithm for searching a better position, with which the global best position can be updated. Then the search accuracy and the solution quality can be enhanced. PDPSO and improved IWO are synthesized into one single PDPSO-IWO algorithm, which can keep both searching diversification and searching intensification. Furthermore, a hybrid NodeRank (HNodeRank) algorithm is proposed to initialize the population of PDPSO-IWO, and the solution quality can be enhanced further. Since the HW/SW communication cost computing is the most time-consuming process for HW/SW partitioning algorithm, we adopt the GPU parallel technique to accelerate the computing. In this way, the runtime of PDPSO-IWO for large-scale HW/SW partitioning problem can be reduced efficiently. Finally, multiple experiments on benchmarks from state-of-the-art publications and large-scale HW/SW partitioning demonstrate that the proposed algorithm can achieve higher performance than other algorithms.     

采用动态译码缓存的高速指令集模拟器

指令集模拟器是计算机体系结构研究和SoC软硬件协同设计的重要工具，模拟器的性能和灵活性是影响设计和验证效率的重要因素。解释型指令集模拟器具有很好的灵活性，在操作系统等涉及到自修改代码的模拟中具有不可替代的作用。该文给出了一个高性能解释型指令集模拟器的设计，它具有很高的模拟精度和很好的灵活性；同时指令集模拟器采用了动态译码缓存等优化技术，使其具有很高的模拟性能。以ARM7指令集模拟器为实例，所提出的优化技术同样适用于其它现心RISC体系结构。     

嵌入式协调设计中的系统级验证方法及应用

协同验证是在嵌入式系统协调设计过程中用以检验系统功能是否正确的有效手段。由于精确指令集模拟器模拟的细节多、速度慢，通常成为复杂嵌入式系统协同验证的瓶颈，因此提出使用RTOS软件模拟器和指令集模拟器相结合的多层次验证方法，提高了复杂嵌入式系统的验证速度，并通过某图像压缩系统的验证实例，说明该验证方法的有效性。     

高效软硬件划分算法及其提升技术

软硬件划分是软硬件协同设计的关键环节,它决定系统中哪些组件由软件实现,哪些由硬件实现。软硬件划分问题已被证明是NP完全问题。将一类软硬件划分问题看作变异的0-1背包问题,在求解背包问题的算法基础上构造出软硬件划分问题的优质启发解。此外,采用禁忌搜索(Tabu Search)算法对求得的启发解进行改进,在软件开销和通信开销满足一定约束的条件下,使得硬件开销尽可能小。实验结果证明,所提算法对当前最新算法的改进最大可达到28%。     

Efficient Hardware/Software Implementation of an Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy System

This paper describes the development of efficient hardware/software (HW/SW) neuro-fuzzy systems. The model used in this work consists of an adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system modified for efficient HW/SW implementation. The design of two different on-chip approaches are presented: a high-performance parallel architecture for offline training and a pipelined architecture suitable for online parameter adaptation. Details of important aspects concerning the design of HW/SW solutions are given. The proposed architectures have been implemented using a system-on-a-programmable-chip. The device contains an embedded-processor core and a large field programmable gate array (FPGA). The processor provides flexibility and high precision to implement the learning algorithms, while the FPGA allows the development of high-speed inference architectures for real-time embedded applications.     

A software integration approach for designing and assessing dependable embedded systems

Embedded systems increasingly entail complex issues of hardware-software (HW-SW) co-design. As the number and range of SW functional components typically exceed the finite HW resources, a common approach is that of resource sharing (i.e., the deployment of diverse SW functionalities onto the same HW resources). Consequently, to result in a meaningful co-design solution, one needs to factor the issues of processing capability, power, communication bandwidth, precedence relations, real-time deadlines, space, and cost. As SW functions of diverse criticality (e.g. brake control and infotainment functions) get integrated, an explicit integration requirement need is to carefully plan resource sharing such that faults in low-criticality functions do not affect higher-criticality functions.On this background, the main contribution of this paper is a dependability-driven framework that helps to conduct the integration of SW components onto HW resources such that the maintenance of system dependability over integration of diverse criticality components is assured by design.We first develop a clustering strategy for SW components into Fault Containment Modules (FCMs) such that error propagation via interaction is minimized. Subsequently, the rules of composition for FCMs with respect to error propagation are developed. To allocate the resulting FCMs to the existing HW resources we provide several heuristics, each optimizing particular attributes thereof. Further, a framework for assessing the goodness of the achieved HW-SW composition as a dependable embedded system is presented. Two new techniques for quantifying the goodness of the proposed mappings are introduced by examples, both based on a multi-criteria decision theoretic approach.     

基于NSGA-II的嵌入式系统软硬件划分方法

软硬件划分是软硬件协同设计中的一个关键问题。针对单处理器嵌入式系统,提出将NSGA-II应用于软硬件划分中,该算法一次运行可以获得多个Pareto最优解,为各个目标函数之间权衡分析提供了有效的工具,提高了设计效率。结果表明,通过该划分方法,在满足系统性能要求下,可为复杂嵌入式系统提供多个设计目标的全局优化方案。     

嵌入式系统集成开发环境的构成

传统的嵌入式系统设计方法需要反复悠系统的设计方案,速度慢,效率低。软／硬件协同设计能够最大限度地挖掘系统潜能,有效利用现有资源,速度快,质量高。文章描述了为实现协高设计而开发的集成开发环境的构成、目前的现状及发展趋势。     

Algorithmic aspects for multiple-choice hardware/software partitioning

Hardware–software partitioning (HW/SW) divides an application into software and hardware. It is one of the crucial steps in embedded system design. For a given task, hardware with different areas may provide different execution speeds due to the potential of parallel execution in hardware implementation. Thus, one task may have multiple-choice in hardware implementation according to the available hardware areas. Existing HW/SW partitioning approaches typically consider only a single implementation manner in hardware, overlooking the multiple-choice of hardware implementations. This paper presents a computing model to cater for the HW/SW partitioning problems with the multiple-choice implementation in hardware. An efficient heuristic algorithm is proposed to rapidly generate approximate solution, that is further refined by a tabu search algorithm also customized in this paper. Moreover, a dynamic programming algorithm is proposed for the exact solution of the relatively small problems. Extensive simulation results show that the approximate solutions are very close to the exact ones, and they can be refined by tabu search to the solutions with the error no more than 1.5% for all cases considered in this paper.     

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 %.     

BOAR: an advanced HW/SW coemulation environment for DSP system development

The BOAR emulation system is targeted to hardware/software (HW/SW) codevelopment of advanced embedded DSP and telecom systems. The challenge of the BOAR system is efficient customization of programmable hardware, and dedicated partitioning routine to target applications and structures, which allows quite high overall system performance. The system allows multiple configurations for communication between processors and field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) making the BOAR system an efficient tool for real-time HW/SW coverification. The reprogrammable hardware of the emulation tool is based on four Xilinx 4000-series devices, two Texas TMS320C50 signal processors and one Motorola MC68302 microcontroller. With current devices the BOAR hardware provides approximately 40–70 kgates of logic capacity in DSP applications. The emulation capacity can be expanded by connecting several similar boards in chain. The system has also a versatile internal reprogrammable test environment for test bench development, performance evaluations and design debugging. The logic development environment is based on the Synopsys synthesis tools and an automatic design management software, which performs resource mapping and performance-driven design partitioning between FPGAs. The emulation hardware is currently connected to logic and software development environments via an RS-232C bus. The BOAR emulation system has been found a very efficient platform for real-life prototyping of different types of DSP algorithms and systems, and validating correct functionality of a VHDL macro library.     

一种基于监测的嵌入式系统设计技术

提出一种嵌入式系统软硬件协同设计方法，它以数据流图为系统模型对嵌入式系统的功能和性能需求进行描述，并通过一种特定的实现结构，使得设计者可以借助快速样机平台和事件驱动式监测技术来精确测定目标系统对系统模型的实现状况，从而使得软硬件协同设计过程特别是系统优化和性能验证能在精确、可靠的测试数据基础上进行．同目前通常使用的以软硬件部件性能估算为基础的软硬件协同设计方法相比，这种以测试为基础的设计技术更能确保设计结果的合理．