Guest Editors' Introduction: Multiprocessor Systems-on-Chips

HW/SW interfaces allow verification early in the design process. Verification of the HW/SW interface itself imposes new challenges. It is not sufficient to verify the interface independent of its context—the interface must be verified relative to a given hardware platform. Of course, researchers can’t wait until the hardware prototype is available to carry out this verification. Researchers can use an abstract HW/SW interface to verify the correctness of the interface abstract design without using the physical prototype. Abstract HW/SW interfaces allow using stan-HW/SW interfaces allow using standards. A fairly general HW/SW interface model can be useful and applicable in a variety of applications. The advantage of such a general model is that developers can reuse application software, hardware components, and platform and middleware modules across different products, product families, and even application domains. The drawback that accompanies generality is inefficiency. For applications that require only a small subset of the complete HW/SW interface functionality, a generic model carries a tremendous overhead that cost-sensitive applications can’t tolerate. Using an abstract HW/SW interface architecture that is highly configurable and parameterVerification of the HW/SW interface itself imposes new challenges.