Synthesis of application-specific multiprocessor systems including memory components

Heterogeneous systems have the potential to achieve enhanced performance as well as cost-effectiveness over homogeneous systems when the application domain is known since they can match the problem structure more closely. It would be useful to have systematic methods for designing such systems for given applications. A formal design method, SOS, has been developed which can be used to synthesize optimal heterogeneous systems for given applications. The method involves creation of a mixed integer-linear programming (MILP) model and solution of the model. The method has been extended to deal with memory costs explicitly, and the extended MILP model is presented. Several experiments were performed with the original as well as the extended MILP model. These results indicate that it is important to include memory costs explicitly at design time