Aspects of System Modelling in Hardware/Software Partitioning

This paper addresses fundamental aspects of system modelling and partitioning algorithms in the area of Hardware/Software Codesign. Three basic system models for partitioning are presented and the consequences of partitioning according to each of these are analyzed. The analysis shows the importance of making a clear distinction between the model used for partitioning and the model used for evaluation. It also illustrates the importance of having a realistic hardware model such that hardware sharing can be taken into account. Finally, the importance of integrating scheduling and allocation with partitioning is demonstrated. 1 Introduction Hardware/software partitioning is often viewed as the synthesis of an architecture consisting of a single CPU and a single dedicated hardware component (full custom, FPGA, etc.) from an initial system specification, e.g., [1]. The aim of this paper is to emphasize the importance of clearly defining and reporting the partitioning model assumed by a pa..