Abstract

To aid in the functional partitioning of a system into interacting hardware and software components, fast yet accurate estimations of hardware size are crucial. We introduce a technique for obtaining such estimates in two orders of magnitude less time than previous approaches without sacrificing substantial accuracy, by incrementally updating a design model for a changed partition rather than reestimating entirely. 1 Introduction The designer of an embedded system is often faced with the challenge of partitioning the system functionality for implementation among hardware and software components, such as among ASICs and processors. New approaches for such partitioning start with a simulatable specification of system functionality, and then explore numerous possible partitions of functions from that specification among the hardware and software components [1]. We therefore need a method to determine, among other things, the hardware size of a set of functions, to see if that set will me...

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