Impact of Hardware/Software Partitioning and MicroBlaze FPGA Configurations on the Embedded Systems Performances - Complex System Modelling and Control Through Intelligent Soft Computations - page 703

Fig. 3 Vulcan and cosyma approaches

Two representative approaches directly affecting the research of this chapter are
Vulcan (Wolf 2003 ) and Cosyma (Co-synthesis embedded architecture) approaches
(L

pez 2003 ). Both Vulcan and Cosyma use partitioning
approach, which iterates over hardware synthesis and software generation. Iteration,
in these approaches, is necessary because there are no approaches known to
accurately estimate the results of optimizing compilers and high-level synthesis
tools with advanced techniques. While Vulcan is hardware oriented, starting with
an all hardware implementation and moves operations to software on a given
processor until time constraints are veri

ó pez-Vallejo and L ó

ed, COSYMA is software oriented, starting
with an all software implementation on a given processor and moves operations to
hardware until no time constraint is veri ed any more. Several studies employ these

approaches to automate their co-design approach (Henkel and Ernst 1998 ; Gupta
et al. 1992 ). Figure 3 illustrates these two co-design approaches.
The automation of hardware/software partitioning process allows the classifi-

-

cation of embedded speci cation to determine which components can bene t from

the transformation to hardware and the best con guration for getting an optimal

gain of performance. Transformations of hardware nodes are provided using HLS
approaches. In the next sub-section, we will introduce the HLS design approaches.

2.1.3 HLS Approaches

Using HLS approaches, complexities are managed by (a) starting the design process
at a higher level of abstraction, (b) automating the hardware code generation, and (3)
reusing intellectual components (IPs). Reducing the migration time from a high-level