A Unified HW/SW Interface Refinement Approach for MPSoC Design

We introduce the service based component model as a unifying concept to specify and refine the HW/SW interface in MPSoC designs. The model allows encompassing the intricate dependencies between hardware components and low level system software in a structured, component based approach. Based on this model, we propose a method and tools to automate the refinement of abstract HW/SW interfaces using a predefined component library. The main benefit of such refinement methodology is a seamless HW/SW integration allowing efficient customization of the HW/SW interface. The approach was successfully applied to the design of an MPEG-4 video encoder