Hardware/software co-design for DSP applications via the HMS framework

The design of computer systems that incorporate both standardized off-the-shelf processors, or software, as well as specialized hardware is referred to as hardware/software (hw/sw) co-design. This paper studies the problem and presents a system, the Hardware/MultiSoftware Co-design (HMS) system, for obtaining the best hw/sw configuration for DSP applications. New algorithms for performing partitioning, scheduling, loop pipelining (retiming), hardware needability analysis, etc., are presented. The final configuration satisfies both area and time constraints while using as many standardized processors as possible along with a minimum amount of extra hardware