Embedded Software for SoC - Grupo de Mecatrônica EESC/USP

140 Chapter 11
is implemented in hardware and generate interface between them. In the
present condition, although the designer have to specify the partition point,
the automation could be possible by development of co-design technology in
the future.
The part implemented through software is converted to C/C++ description.
The generated description and the generated software interface (PDIC)
become the description of the device driver. The statement for parallelism,
synchronization and communication offered by SpecC are converted to tasks
and system calls in real-time kernel. The part implemented through hardware
are converted to HDL. The generated HDL and the generated hardware interface
(the glue logic) become the description of the device. In this research,
the conversion technique of SpecC to HDL is not considered as one of the
main objectives and it is taken from the work of other researchers [5].
3. EVALUATION POINTS AND EVALUATION METHODS
The points for evaluating the applicability of SpecC as the integrated description
language for the proposed design method are shown below.
1.
2.
3.
The feasibility of describing the device and the driver as a unit.
The feasibility of mechanically converting the description of parallelism,
synchronization and communication offered by SpecC to a device driver
or a software-hardware interface.
The feasibility of converting the integrated description to implement
description when the partition point between the software and the hardware
is changed.
This research only evaluates the conversion technique from a SpecC
description to a device driver and not the conversion technique from a SpecC
description to a device.
To evaluate point (1), we describe the device and the device driver that
constitute the SIO system as a unit using SpecC. A conceptual figure of the
SIO system is shown in Figure 11-2. In addition to the basic serial transmit
and receive functions, the system also has generation and analysis functions