Hardware-software co-design: A practical course for future embedded engineers

Abstract

This paper describes the way how to teach the hardware-software co-design technique and basics of System-on- Chip (SoC) design and architecture on a practical example using state of the art AP SoC (All Programmable System on Chip) which combines FPGA logic and dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 CPU. Students are required to propose a new peripheral circuit in the FPGA logic and its interconnection with ARM CPU by an AXI4-Lite bus. This paper also presents the structure and results of these student's projects and the influence of previous courses oriented towards the general digital design in Informatics specialization intended for future embedded engineers.