A HW/SW codesign framework based on distributed DSP virtual machines

Abstract

In recent years the interest on the problem of designing mixed hardware/software systems has increased due to growing system complexities. This paper describes a hardware/software codesign framework for the design of embedded systems based on digital signal processors and FPGAs. Our approach is based on distributed DSP virtual machines for simulation and verification of the application on a Linux cluster and for running the application on different target architectures (DSPs, FPGAs) as well. The DSP virtual machines were designed to make DSP applications portable across different platforms while maintaining optimal code.