A co-design based high-performance real-time GIS

This paper presents a co-design approach for implementing the map overlaying operation for a high-performance real-time geographical information system (GIS). The map overlaying is the most important but also the most computation-intensive operation in GIS systems. Development of an embedded environment for attaining high performance is achieved by implementing a certain computational core in hardware which is efficiently used by software. The methodology partitions the hardware/software parts based on evaluation of a cost function. The hardware core is simulated using VerilogXL and prototyped in VLSI using Synopsys and Cadence, while the software part is implemented using C++. The performance studies show that the average response time using the proposed co-design is 70 times faster than an all-software solution. The proposed co-design approach results in impressive throughput improvement without sacrificing any flexibility.