Research On Software/Hardware Co-design Using UML And SystemC

As embedded systems being used widely, design methods of embedded system has been developing rapidly. However, there are some problems such as poor quality designs, schedule slippages in traditional design of embedded systems. To solve these problems, a hardware/software co-design methodology is put forward. Software/hardware co-design emphasizes software and hardware design of concurrent and integrated, overcomes drawbacks that the traditional design methods bring in through software and hardware design Separately. Through mining the collaborative between hardware and software, it can achieve efficient work of systems. It can also make full use of existing resources, shorten the development periods and reduce the cost and enhance system performance.In recent years, the research of software/hardware co-design is very hot, but typical software/hardware co-design methodology still exist some problems, these problems have limited the software/hardware co-design methods been widely used. In this thesis, based on the study of software/hardware co-design methodolgy, a new more perfect software/hardware co-design method combining with UML and SystemC for embedded systems is put forword, furthermore, a software/hardware co-design system using UML and SystemC is preparatorily implemented. At present, software/hardware co-design methodology is still in its early stage, many techniques are not mature and practical yet, but it will bring a revolutionary changes for the design of embedded systems and improve design productivity greatly in the future, the rearch of software/hardware co-design would be of great significance.Firstly, the basic concept of software/hardware co-design and the present research situation worldwide is introduced, the techniques are also discussed separately in the thesis, which is in the system description stage, system architecture design stage, hardware/software design and implementation stage. Secondly, combined with three representative methods of hardware/software co-design systems: POLIS,VULCAN and CORSAIR, the main steps of co-design are studied and analyzed including system description, hardware/software partitioning and hardware/software implementation-synthesis, and some new ideas are given here. Thirdly, UML and modeling technology of embedded systems using UML are described clearly, a handheld terminals is a good example for this, furthermore, the algorithm of how to convert the UML diagram into SystemC codes is mainly concerned on in this thesis. Fourthly, the basic concept of SystemC is described, and the SystemC Modeling platform and simulation mechanism are analyzed, software/hardware co-design methods using SystemC are discussed. Finally, by applying co-design ideas using UML and SystemC, software/hardware co-design system using UML and SystemC is preparatorily implemented, which is to establish a development environment for designing embedded system.