A top-down design methodology using virtual platforms for concept development

Mohit Shah, Brian Mears, Chaitali Chakrabarti, Andreas Spanias
2012 Thirteenth International Symposium on Quality Electronic Design (ISQED)  
Virtual platforms are widely used for system-level modeling, design and simulation. In this paper, we propose a virtual platform-based, top-down, system-level design methodology for developing and testing hardware/software right from the concept level and even before the architecture is finalized. The methodology is based on using tools such as QEMU, SystemC and TLM2.0 that starts with a functional, high-level description of the system and gradually refines the intricate architectural details.
more » ... e present our results by testing a novel concept aimed at performing audio blogging. The system under consideration involves the design of a low-power wearable audio recorder, an Android application for user interface and a server for audio analysis. A virtual system consisting of three instances of QEMU and other tools was created to demonstrate the concept and to test this approach. Finally, we describe a suite of tools useful for quickly validating concepts and creating virtual platforms for early hardware/software codesign.
doi:10.1109/isqed.2012.6187531 dblp:conf/isqed/ShahMCS12 fatcat:plt5jvjeubhydknj3n7puhzbki