Accelerating design space exploration using Pareto-front arithmetics [SoC design]

In this paper, we propose an approach for the synthesis of heterogeneous (embedded) systems, while exploiting a hierarchical problem structure. Particular to our approach is that we explore the set of so-called Pareto-optimal solutions, i.e., optimizing multiple objectives simultaneously. Since system complexity grows steadily, leading to giant search spaces which demand new strategies in design space exploration, we propose Pareto-front arithmetics (PFA), using results of subsystems to construct implementations of the top-level system. This way, we are able to reduce the exploration time dramatically. An example of an MPEG4 coder is used to show the benefit of this approach in real-life applications.