A Practical Introduction to Hardware/Software Codesign


Book Description

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.




A Practical Introduction to Hardware/Software Codesign


Book Description

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.




A Practical Introduction to Hardware/Software Codesign


Book Description

This book provides a systematic introduction to the topic of Hardware-Software Codesign. The material emphasizes the basic ideas, and the practical aspects of Hardware-Software Codesign. The book developed from a course on the topic of Hardware-Software Codesign, organized by the author at Virginia Tech. It is separated into four differenct sections; Basic Concepts, Custom Architectures, Hardware/Software Interfaces, and Applications. The author covers many concepts including the various forms of expressing computations, sequential and parallel implementations, control-flow and data-flow, control dependency and data dependency, latency and throughput as well as the architecture design space of hardware data paths, finite state machines, micro-programmed machines, instruction-set processors, system-on-chip, and on-chip buses. The material also includes the different forms of hardware/software interfaces, their impact on performance, hardware cost, and software complexity. The book contains information on hardware/software integration of components on top of hardware/software interfaces as well as design methodology and design flows for hardware-software codesign including performance evaluation, verification and synthesis of hardware and software implementations. Problems are included at the end of each chapter and a solutions manual will be available for instructors.







Readings in Hardware/Software Co-Design


Book Description

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.




Embedded Systems – A Hardware-Software Co-Design Approach


Book Description

This textbook introduces the concept of embedded systems with exercises using Arduino Uno. It is intended for advanced undergraduate and graduate students in computer science, computer engineering, and electrical engineering programs. It contains a balanced discussion on both hardware and software related to embedded systems, with a focus on co-design aspects. Embedded systems have applications in Internet-of-Things (IoT), wearables, self-driving cars, smart devices, cyberphysical systems, drones, and robotics. The hardware chapter discusses various microcontrollers (including popular microcontroller hardware examples), sensors, amplifiers, filters, actuators, wired and wireless communication topologies, schematic and PCB designs, and much more. The software chapter describes OS-less programming, bitmath, polling, interrupt, timer, sleep modes, direct memory access, shared memory, mutex, and smart algorithms, with lots of C-code examples for Arduino Uno. Other topics discussed are prototyping, testing, verification, reliability, optimization, and regulations. Appropriate for courses on embedded systems, microcontrollers, and instrumentation, this textbook teaches budding embedded system programmers practical skills with fun projects to prepare them for industry products. Introduces embedded systems for wearables, Internet-of-Things (IoT), robotics, and other smart devices; Offers a balanced focus on both hardware and software co-design of embedded systems; Includes exercises, tutorials, and assignments.




Introduction to Embedded Systems, Second Edition


Book Description

An introduction to the engineering principles of embedded systems, with a focus on modeling, design, and analysis of cyber-physical systems. The most visible use of computers and software is processing information for human consumption. The vast majority of computers in use, however, are much less visible. They run the engine, brakes, seatbelts, airbag, and audio system in your car. They digitally encode your voice and construct a radio signal to send it from your cell phone to a base station. They command robots on a factory floor, power generation in a power plant, processes in a chemical plant, and traffic lights in a city. These less visible computers are called embedded systems, and the software they run is called embedded software. The principal challenges in designing and analyzing embedded systems stem from their interaction with physical processes. This book takes a cyber-physical approach to embedded systems, introducing the engineering concepts underlying embedded systems as a technology and as a subject of study. The focus is on modeling, design, and analysis of cyber-physical systems, which integrate computation, networking, and physical processes. The second edition offers two new chapters, several new exercises, and other improvements. The book can be used as a textbook at the advanced undergraduate or introductory graduate level and as a professional reference for practicing engineers and computer scientists. Readers should have some familiarity with machine structures, computer programming, basic discrete mathematics and algorithms, and signals and systems.




Reconfigurable Computing


Book Description

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.




Embedded System Design


Book Description

Until the late 1980s, information processing was associated with large mainframe computers and huge tape drives. During the 1990s, this trend shifted toward information processing with personal computers, or PCs. The trend toward miniaturization continues and in the future the majority of information processing systems will be small mobile computers, many of which will be embedded into larger products and interfaced to the physical environment. Hence, these kinds of systems are called embedded systems. Embedded systems together with their physical environment are called cyber-physical systems. Examples include systems such as transportation and fabrication equipment. It is expected that the total market volume of embedded systems will be significantly larger than that of traditional information processing systems such as PCs and mainframes. Embedded systems share a number of common characteristics. For example, they must be dependable, efficient, meet real-time constraints and require customized user interfaces (instead of generic keyboard and mouse interfaces). Therefore, it makes sense to consider common principles of embedded system design. Embedded System Design starts with an introduction into the area and a survey of specification models and languages for embedded and cyber-physical systems. It provides a brief overview of hardware devices used for such systems and presents the essentials of system software for embedded systems, like real-time operating systems. The book also discusses evaluation and validation techniques for embedded systems. Furthermore, the book presents an overview of techniques for mapping applications to execution platforms. Due to the importance of resource efficiency, the book also contains a selected set of optimization techniques for embedded systems, including special compilation techniques. The book closes with a brief survey on testing. Embedded System Design can be used as a text book for courses on embedded systems and as a source which provides pointers to relevant material in the area for PhD students and teachers. It assumes a basic knowledge of information processing hardware and software. Courseware related to this book is available at http://ls12-www.cs.tu-dortmund.de/~marwedel.




Introduction to Embedded Systems


Book Description

This textbook serves as an introduction to the subject of embedded systems design, using microcontrollers as core components. It develops concepts from the ground up, covering the development of embedded systems technology, architectural and organizational aspects of controllers and systems, processor models, and peripheral devices. Since microprocessor-based embedded systems tightly blend hardware and software components in a single application, the book also introduces the subjects of data representation formats, data operations, and programming styles. The practical component of the book is tailored around the architecture of a widely used Texas Instrument’s microcontroller, the MSP430 and a companion web site offers for download an experimenter’s kit and lab manual, along with Powerpoint slides and solutions for instructors.