Using Reconfigurability to Achieve Real-time Profiling for Hardware/Software Codesign

Embedded systems combine a processor with dedicated logic to meet design specifications at a reasonable cost. The attempt to amalgamate two distinct design environments introduces many problems, one being how to partition a single design for the two platforms to achieve the best performance with the least effort. Since the latest FPGA technology allows the integration of soft or hard CPU cores with dedicated logic on a single chip, this presents new opportunities for addressing hardware/software codesign issues in the FPGA design process by utilizing the reconfigurable environment. This paper introduces SnoopP, a non-intrusive, real time, profiling tool. The user is able to obtain a clock cycle accurate profile of the real time performance of a software program running on a soft-core processor instantiated on an FPGA. SnoopP is an essential tool for hardware/software codesign on a reconfigurable platform. It allows the user to quickly obtain accurate profiling information that may greatly influence the partitioning of the design