An Industrial Case Study in Hw-sw Co-design Using Castle

Co-design is concerned with the joint design of hardware and software making up an embedded computer system [Wol94]. A top down design flow for an embedded system begins with a system specification. If it is executable, it may be used for simulation, system verification or to identify algorithmical bottlenecks. In contrast to other chapters of this book, the specification is not developed in this case study, rather it is given from the beginning. Furthermore we are not concerned with partitioning or synthesis of dedicated HW. Instead we focus on the problem how to find an off-the-shelf micro-controller which implements the desired functionality and meets all specification constraints. If feasible, this is usually much cheaper then using dedicated hardware. This chapter will answer the question of feasibility for a real life problem from automobile industry.