EECE 7368:
High-Level Design of Hardware/Software Systems

Class time: Tuesdays 11:45am-1:25pm
Thurs: 2:50pm - 4:30pm
First lecture Thursday 09/05/2013 2:50pm
Location: Snell Library, Room 017 map
Banner Listing: Catalog entrySchedule
Course website: Blackboard site
Syllabus: pdf
 
System complexities are growing exponentially driven by ever increasing application demands and technological advances that allow us to put complete multi-processor systems on a chip (MPSoCs). System-level design that jointly covers hardware and software is one approach to address the associated complexities in the design process and the market pressures. This course presents state-of-the-art methods, tools and techniques for system-level design and modeling of complete multi-processor systems from specification down to implementation across hardware-software boundaries. Using the SpecC language and the System-On-Chip Environment (SCE), we will specify, simulate, analyze, model and design hardware-software systems based on examples of typical embedded applications.

Topics:
  • Overview of Embedded systems, electronic system-level (ESL) design
  • Models of Computation: FSMs, dataflow, process networks
  • Introduction to System-level design languages (SLDLs): SpecC, SystemC
  • Discrete event simulation semantics
  • Specification, profiling and analysis of HW/SW systems
  • System-level design methodologies and tools for:
    • Partitioning
    • Scheduling
    • Communication synthesis
  • System-level modeling:
    • Transaction-Level Modeling (TLM) for communication
    • Processor and RTOS modeling
  • Embedded hardware and software implementation: synthesis and cosimulation
  • System design examples and case studies.

Prerequisites:

Textbooks:

Embedded System Design: Modeling, Synthesis, Verification

Primary

Optional