Cooptimization of Interface Hardware and Software for I/O Controllers

The allocation of device variables on I/O registers affects the code size and performance of an I/O device driver. This work seeks the allocation with the minimal software or hardware cost in a hardware/software codesign environment. The problems of exact minimization under constraints are formulated as zero-one integer linear programming problems. Heuristic algorithms based on iterative refinement are also proposed. The proposed design methodology was implemented in C language. Compared with industrial designs, the system can obtain design alternatives that reduce both software and hardware costs