Hardware-software cosynthesis for the Riley system

Electronic systems containing application specific hardware working alongside an embedded microprocessor are now common place. However, to design such systems quickly and reliably, while exploring the design space sufficiently to ensure near optimal solutions presents many new challenges. The problem is further complicated by reconfigurable hardware such as FPGAs some of which can be dynamically reconfigured. This paper describes some of the tools that we have been developing to assist the design and analysis of such systems. We hope that the collection of tools would form a framework that facilitates rapid design exploration, evaluation and validation. In developing such a framework, it is often helpful to use a specific hardware platform in order to provide a focus for tool development. We have been fortunate to have access to such a hardware platform developed at Hewlett Packard Laboratories Bristol known as the Riley System. While some of the tools developed are specific to Riley, the approach used should be general enough to be applicable to other platforms.