Software estimation using a generic-processor model

Previous work in hardware-software co-design has addressed issues in system modeling, partitioning, and mixed module simulation and integration. Software estimation, which provides software metrics to assist hardware-software partitioning, has not been extensively studied. We present a generic-processor model for estimating execution time and program-memory size of a specification to be executed on a given processor. Experiments have shown that our estimator is fairly accurate and fast when applied to a wide variety of designs.<>