A fast codesign approach for low cost application-specific-system on programmable chip (SoPC) : Application to sensor network

Systems on programmable chip, as system on chip, are composed by software and hardware. Therefore a codesign based approach is needed to meet the functional requirements. While classic codesign flows are long and involve complex and expensive design tools, this paper presents a fast but efficient codesign flow. To reduce the design cycle and the total cost of ownership (TCO), the presented design flow is based on massive reuse of Hw Intellectual propriety (IP) and Sw components, and involves costless design tools. As a proof of concept we designed and implemented a low cost standalone monitoring gateway for sensor network entirely based on royalty free Hw and Sw components. The hardware design was based on an AMBA bus system and a SPARC V8 compliant CPU subsystem. The software stack is based on a ported Linux kernel and a lightweight Round Robin Data Base Tool acting as a kind of middleware processing hardware-independent-software. The design was a submitted to series of stress test to evaluate its performance and capacity.