Collaborative hardware/software partition of coarse-grained reconfigurable system using evolutionary ant colony optimization

Abstract

The flexibility, performance and cost effectiveness of reconfigurable architectures have lead to its widespread use for embedded applications. Coarse-grained reconfigurable system design is very complex for multi-fields experts to collaborate on application algorithm design, hardware/software co-design and system decision. However, existing reconfigurable system design methods and environments can only support hardware/software co-design, ignoring the collaboration between multi-field experts. This paper presents a collaborative partition approach of coarse-grained reconfigurable system design using evolutionary ant colony optimization. We create a distributed collaborative design environment for system decision engineers, software designers, hardware designers and application algorithm developers. The method not only utilizes the advantages of ant colony optimization for searching global optimal solutions, but also provides a framework for multi-field experts to work collaboratively. Experimental results show that the method improves the quality and speed of hardware/software partition for coarse-grained reconfigurable system design.