Design & Co-design of
Embedded Systems

Embedded System Design:

Traditional vs. Modern Style

Maziar Goudarzi

2005

Design & Co-design of Embed
ded Systems

2

Today Program



Embedded System Design Process



Traditional approach



Analysis & discussion



Modern approaches



Course final project

2005

Design & Co-design of Embed
ded Systems

3

Traditional Approach

CPU

mem

input

output

analog

analog

embedded
computer

Logic

2005

Design & Co-design of Embed
ded Systems

4

Design Example



Robot Control Unit
(RCU) of Arvand
soccer-playing
robots

Bottom View of

Arvand Robots

castor

wheel

motion
wheels

Touch

sensor

s

Infra-Red

Sensors

steering

motors

(not

shown)

2005

Design & Co-design of Embed
ded Systems

5

Design Example (cont’d)



Things to handle



Motors



PWM for motion motors



DC control for steering



Touch sensors



Read-in and refresh values



Infra-Red sensors



Reset, then read them



Communication to the main motherboard



RS-232 serial link

castor

wheel

motion
wheels

2005

Design & Co-design of Embed
ded Systems

6

Design Example (cont’d)



Implementation steps

1.

Choose HW or SW implementation per operation

2.

Design the analog IO parts

3.

Design the Printed Circuit Board (PCB)

1.

Pass the PCB files to manufacturing firms

4.

HW: Develop the FPGA contents

1.

Program the FPGA configuration EEPROM

5.

SW: Develop the 8051 program

1.

Program the 8051 instruction memory (EEPROM)

6.

Integrate HW, SW, and the PCB

7.

Test

1.

Limited test in isolation (as far as possible)

2.

Test in action (on the robot)

2005

Design & Co-design of Embed
ded Systems

7

Design Example (cont’d)

Fabrication

Test

System

design

PCB test

SW test

Time

Tasks

Traditional System Design Process

Simulation

PCB design

SW design

FPGA design

2005

Design & Co-design of Embed
ded Systems

8

Analysis



Development



Isolated (SW, HW, Analog electronics)



Consistency check: designers



Debug



Before PCB is available



Isolated (SW, HW, Analog)



After PCB is available

1.

Remove the EEPROM/8051

2.

Change the configuration/program

3.

Re-insert the EEPROM/8051



What if PCB initial design (or analog parts) was wrong?

2005

Design & Co-design of Embed
ded Systems

9

Analysis (cont’d)



Some other problems



Tools used



Protel, OrCAD for PCB



Altera MAX+Plus II for FPGA



8051 command-line compiler and debugger



Tool interoperability issues

2005

Design & Co-design of Embed
ded Systems

10

Solution



Try to do as much of the tests as
early as possible in the design cycle



Step 1: Combine HW and SW simulation



Step 2: Add analog parts as well



Analog Mixed-Signal (AMS) simulation



Step 3: Entire design of the PCB?

2005

Design & Co-design of Embed
ded Systems

11

Modern Design Style (HW+SW)

Shared Design

Co-Design Process

HW design

PCB test

SW test

Time

Tasks

System

design

System-Level Partitioning

SW design

2005

Design & Co-design of Embed
ded Systems

12

Modern Design Style



Various approaches



Application-Specific Instruction
Processor (ASIP)



Platform-based design



Communication-based design



Component-based (core-based) design



etc.

2005

Design & Co-design of Embed
ded Systems

13

The approach to be evaluated
here

Synthesize HW

Design interface

Time

Tasks

System

Design

Compile SW

Data type

refinement

C++

SystemC

Parallelize

Xilinx tools

Integrate

& Test

2005

Design & Co-design of Embed
ded Systems

14

Ideas for course project



Alternative 1: App. case study

1.

Select an embedded application

2.

Design an executable specification for it

3.

Step by step manually refine it to HW-SW implementation

4.

Report performance, area, power & compare with full-SW

& write a paper (optional)



Suggestions



Data compressor/decompressor



Voice codec



A game



JPEG, JPEG2000

2005

Design & Co-design of Embed
ded Systems

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Ideas for course project (cont’d)



Alternative 2: Methodology case study

1.

Select a system design language and

methodology

2.

Implement an application using them

3.

Give a presentation



Suggestions:



Handle-C & Celoxica “DK Design Suite”



SpecC & the associated tools from UCI



Tensilica’s processor generator (XTensa processor)

2005

Design & Co-design of Embed
ded Systems

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Ideas for course project (cont’d)



Alternative 3: Case study in ODYSSEY

1.

Select an application

2.

Develop an OO C++ program for that

3.

Implement it as HW-SW system using
ODYSSEY tools and flows



Suggestions



The same applications as in alternative 1

2005

Design & Co-design of Embed
ded Systems

17

Ideas for course project (cont’d)



Alternative 4: Implement
algorithms

1.

Select one of the co-synthesis
algorithms (to be taught during the
course)

2.

Develop a program that implements
the algorithm for ODYSSEY

2005

Design & Co-design of Embed
ded Systems

18

Summary



Problems inherent in traditional style
of designing embedded systems



The general solution



A modern approach followed in this
course and to be used in its final
project

2005

Design & Co-design of Embed
ded Systems

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Other Notes



Reading assignments on the course web-page



Announce by the end of next week (1 page)

1.

Your team members (at most 3 persons)

2.

Your selection for course project

3.

Rough schedule



Other deadlines for the project

1.

Report 1: Sun. Aban 15

th



2-3 pages:

•

List of your collected material

•

Summary of what you’ve done + demo of the C++ app.

•

Your plan for next phases and role of each person

2.

Report 2 + Oral presentation: Sun. Azar 13th



4-5 pages:

•

15 min. oral presentation

•

Summary of what you’ve done + experimental results (as far as

available)

•

What’s remained? Plan to finish it.

2005

Design & Co-design of Embed
ded Systems

20

Tool Presentation



Short presentation of the tools to be used
in the course project (now, in the lab.)



Xilinx EDK: Naser MohammadZadeh



Synopsys SystemC Compiler: Morteza
NajafVand