A software/hardware co-design methodology for embedded microprocessor core design

The increasing use of embedded microprocessor core (EMC) technology has become a popular trend for embedded systems. EMC development is a complex interactive process with the algorithm, the software and the hardware. This paper presents a software/hardware co-design methodology to deal with EMC design problems. The proposed stepwise method extracts the algorithm's features and maps them onto the EMC's architecture by performing the analysis on the system level. Optimization is taken in both the software and hardware domains so that the designed EMC can be specific to the algorithm. An EMC design for variable length coding (VLC) applications is exemplified in the paper to illustrate the design procedure.