Software development for high-performance, reconfigurable, embedded multimedia systems

Reconfigurable platforms can be very effective for lowering production costs because they allow the reuse of architecture resources across a variety of applications. We show how to program a reduced-instruction-set-computing (RISC) microprocessor with a reconfigurable functional unit, focusing on DSP applications and using the example of a turbodecoder. We have developed a complete design flow, including a methodology and compilation tool chain, to address the instruction set hardware-software codesign problem for a processor with a runtime reconfigurable unit. The flow starts from a system-level specification (usually a software program) of the application and partitions it into software and hardware domains to achieve the best speed, power, and area performance, while satisfying resource constraints imposed by the target platform architecture. We describe a methodology and a set of tools that allow extensive design exploration for hardware-software codesign with the goal of improving the overall utilization of reconfigurable multimedia platforms.