. EXPRESSION : An ADL for System

| We describe EXPRESSION, a language supporting architectural design space exploration for embedded Systems-on-Chip (SOC) and automatic generation of a retargetable compiler/simulator toolkit. Key features of our language-driven design methodology include: a mixed behavioral/structural representation supporting a natural speci cation of the architecture; explicit speci cation of the memory subsystem allowing novel memory organizations and hierarchies; clean syntax and ease of modi cations supporting architectural exploration; a single speci cation supporting consistency and completeness checking of the architecture; and e cient speci cation of architectural resource constraints allowing extraction of detailed reservation tables for compiler scheduling. We illustrate key features of EXPRESSION through simple examples and demonstrate its e cacy in supporting exploration and automatic software toolkit generation for an embedded SOC codesign ow.