Partitioning and surmounting the software-hardware abstraction gap in an ASIC design project

The design complexity of an ASIC as well as its hardware expenditure can be optimized if software is used as far as possible and application-specific hardware executes only the critical algorithms. Experience within a chipset design project has led to various criteria to evaluate the tradeoff between hardware and software. Partitioning under great uncertainty concerning many realization parameters is demonstrated. The gap in abstraction between specification and implementation is much greater in hardware design than in software development. The concepts applied in surmounting the gap, like abstract modeling, type of model, and hierarchy, are defined and their relations are examined