Application of UML for hardware design based on design process model

Abstract

We address a problem of reusing and customizing soft IP components by introducing a concept of design process-a series of common, well-defined and well-proven domain-specific actions and methods performed to achieve a certain design aim. We especially examine system-level design processes that are aimed at designing a hardware system by integrating soft IPs at a high level of abstraction. We combine this concept with object-oriented hardware design using UML and metaprogramming paradigm for describing generation of domain code.