Software-Compiled System Design: A Methodology for Field- Programmable System-on-Chip Design

With the proliferation of Field-Programmable System-onChip (FPSoC) devices such as Altera Excalibur and Xilinx Virtex II Pro, more system integrators are now facing the challenge of merging hardware and software design. This paper describes software-compiled system design, a methodology supporting the design of electronics containing both programmable logic and software-driven microprocessors. To facilitate hardware and software design convergence, this methodology includes C-based design descriptions, hardware/software co-design partitioning and analysis, multi-level and multi-language co-verification, and direct compilation to programmable logic. The paper presents a practical implementation of this methodology using the Celoxica DK Design Suite of tools as well as a design example employing a JPEG2000 algorithm.