Impact of Hardware/Software Partitioning and MicroBlaze FPGA Configurations on the Embedded Systems Performances - Complex System Modelling and Control Through Intelligent Soft Computations - page 723

Table 8 S-Quark implementation results
Execution
time (ms)

Resources
(Slices)

Design time : From architecture
model to design implementation

Node 1 (Hw) 75 832 1 h

Node 2 (SW7) 32 774 5 min

Node 3 (SW5) 52 853

Node 4 (SW1) 124 954

Total Hw/Sw nodes 283 3413 1 h/15 min

purposed partitioning solution will determine the best partition that will reduce the
number on nodes implemented on hardware and increase the number of nodes
implemented on software to reduce the design time and the hardware area.
After hardware/software partitioning, we have to implement our s-Quark
benchmark. Hardware nodes are implemented using HLS approach (CoDevel-
oper TM tool). Software nodes are executed using XPS tool. The integration of the
hardware nodes (co-processors or IPs) with MicroBlaze soft-core processor is
achieved using EDK tool. Table 8 illustrates results of s-Quark implementation.

7 Discussions

Increasing complexities of embedded systems application sunders core the need to
take design decisions at an early stage. In our study, we are based on two important
decisions related to the automation of the choice of both hardware/software parti-
tioning and soft-core processor con

gurations.

7.1 Soft-Core Processor Con guration

MicroBlaze is a 32-bit embedded soft-core processor with a reduced instruction set
computer (RISC) architecture. It is highly con gurable and speci cally optimized

for synthesis into Xilinx field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). The MicroBlaze

soft-core processor is available as HDL source code or structural netlist. Itcan also
be integrated into ASICs. As described in Fig. 6 , one of the advantages of Xilinx
MicroBlazesoft-core processors is its fl flexibility: it uses various con gurations

(more than 17 con c application. Another advantage

is its ability to integrate customized IP cores, which can result in a dramatic
acceleration in software execution time (difference between configuration 1 and
con

gurations) required for a speci

guration 17) due to applications being executed in parallel with hardware and
not sequentially in software.