The Chinook Hardware / Software Co - Synthesis System 1

Embedded systems are becoming more commonplace and are being designed by larger numbers of designers with ever tighter constraints on design time. Unfortunately, computer aided design tools for embedded systems have not kept pace with these trends and are still fundamentally identical to those used twenty years ago. The Chinook co-synthesis system, under development at the University of Washington, addresses the automation of the most time-consuming and error-prone tasks in embedded controller design, namely: the synthesis of interface hardware and software needed to integrate system components; the migration of functions between processors and/or custom logic; and the co-simulation of system speci cations before, during, and after synthesis. In this paper, we describe the principal elements of the Chinook system and discuss its application to a variety of embedded designs. Category of interest: (C) Hardware-software Co-design. The Chinook Hardware/Software Co-Synthesis System 1