Computer Aided Embedded Systems Design

This paper gives an overview of the existing approaches to the hardware/software codesign of embedded systems. We discuss all the steps in the design trajectory. The common approach of adding dedicated hardware to accelerate the software (by way of a FPGA or ASIC coprocessor) is judged as not worth the effort. The multi-processor framework of ASIPs (application specific instruction set processors), where instead of coprocessor special functional units are added to the processor core, is identified as a much more interesting basis for embedded