Software-Compiled System Design: A Methodology Based Approach to the Specification and Design of Programmable SoC

As Programmable SoC devices such as Altera Excalibur and Xilinx Virtex II Pro proliferate, more designers are now facing the challenge of integrating hardware and software design. This paper describes software-compiled system design, a methodology supporting the design of electronics containing high-density programmable logic and microprocessor architectures. To enable hardware and software design convergence, this methodology includes C-based design descriptions, hardware/software co-design partitioning and analysis, multi-level and multi-language co-verification, and direct compilation to programmable logic. The paper presents a practical implementation of this methodology using the DK Design Suite of tools as well as a design example employing a JPEG2000 algorithm.