Top Down Approach: SIMULINK Mixed Hardware / Software Design

TL;DR

This paper presents a top-down system-level design flow using Simulink for mixed hardware/software systems, enabling concurrent design and verification across multiple abstraction levels, validated with an MP3 Codec application.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive design methodology starting from Simulink specifications, covering four abstraction levels for concurrent hardware/software development and verification.

Findings

Validated approach with MP3 Codec application

Supports concurrent hardware/software design at multiple levels

Enhances system-level design efficiency

Abstract

System-level design methodologies have been introduced as a solution to handle the design complexity of mixed Hardware / Software systems. In this paper we describe a system-level design flow starting from Simulink specification, focusing on concurrent hardware and software design and verification at four different abstraction levels: System Simulink model, Transaction Simulink model, Macro architecture, and micro architecture. We used the MP3 CodeC application, to validate our approach and methodology.