Efficient Hardware/Software Partitioning Approach for Embedded Multiprocessor Systems

This paper presents an efficient hardware/software partitioning approach that target at embedded multiprocessor systems with time, area, and power constraints. Our approach is performed in two phases. In the partitioning phase, for an embedded system with p software components and q hardware components, recursive spectral bisection (RSB) has been used to partition an application program into n well-balanced and connected blocks with low communication cost. These blocks are mapped into software components and then tasks in software components will be moved to hardware components to meet the deadline constraint. In the scheduling phase, we derive an approach to reduce the system cost in connection with power and hardware area by exchanging tasks between software and hardware components. Experimental results show that our approach is effective for embedded multiprocessor systems