ABSTRACT
This chapter briefly presents the main features of a heterogeneous multiprocessor embedded architecture, to highlight the potential benefits over a more conventional hardware/software solution. It presents the characteristics of the co-design discipline and the peculiarity of its application whenever multiprocessor embedded systems are the target implementation platform. The chapter reviews meaningful examples of co-design environments that have been developed to support multi-processor embedded system design. Heterogeneous multi-processor architectures are common for those systems in which various kinds of communication links interconnect programmable and application-specific processing elements and memories, and multiple tasks are concurrently executed. One of the most important tasks of a real-time system is to produce correct logical results as dictated by the functional specification on the system. Multi-processor embedded systems are a promising solution for a broad range of modern and complex applications. Architectural parameters are extracted from a high-level system specification and they are used to directly instantiate architectural components, such as processors, coprocessors, and communication networks.
