The design of mixed hardware/software systems

Over the past several years there has been a great deal of interest in the design of mixed hardware/software systems, sometimes referred to as hardware/software co-design or hardware/software co-synthesis. However, although many new design methodologies have taken the name hardware/software co-design, they often do not seem to share much in common with one another This partly due to the fact that the problem itself has so many dimensions. This tutorial describes a set of criteria that can be used to compare differing approaches to hardware/software co-design. These criteria are used in the discussion of a number of published hardware/software co-design techniques to illustrate how a wide range of approaches can be viewed within a single framework.