Software-Driven Hardware Development

The cost and complexity of hardware-centric systems can often be reduced by using software to perform tasks which don't appear on the critical path. Alternately, the performance of software can sometimes be improved by using special purpose hardware to implement tasks which do appear on the critical path. Whatever the motivation, most modern systems are composed of both hardware and software components. Given the importance of the connection between hardware and software in these systems, it is surprising how little automated and machine-checkable support there is for co-design space exploration. This paper presents the Connectal framework, which enables the development of hardware accelerators for software applications by generating hardware/software interface implementations from abstract Interface Design Language (IDL) specifications. Connectal generates stubs to support asynchronous remote method invocation from software to software, hardware to software, software to hardware, and hardware to hardware. For high-bandwidth communication, the Connectal framework provides comprehensive support for shared memory between hardware and software components, removing the repetitive work of processor bus interfacing from project tasks. This framework is released as open software under an MIT license, making it available for use in any projects.