Software driven approach for Embedded Devices

This paper presents the possible new design paradigm that emerged during the author’s design of an embedded communication device for Croatian Navy. Prior to codesign techniques that emerged in 1990's the traditional embedded design methodology involved problem specification, separate hardware and software specification, integration, and the system test as the final step in the embedded device design. Such an approach can potentially lead to numerous iterations and can increase the cost of the development cycle because there are no guarantees that separately developed software will work well with separately designed hardware. Codesign techniques, on the other hand, delay the decision to which components of hardware or software will be used for embedded system until late stages of embedded design process. At the time of the invention of the codesign techniques this seemed as perfectly balanced approach between design of hardware and software spending about equal time in the design of both hardware and software components. However, since the 1990’s the design of embedded devices has changed; nowadays the most working hours are spent in the design of software while the design of hardware requires less working hours due to extensive choice of IC’s and supporting electronic circuits, and due to advancement of EDA software tools. In favor of the software-driven approach presented in this paper, it should be noted that nowadays, there is a large number of freely-available software components and libraries which, if properly utilized, greatly expedite the development of the software part of the embedded system design. Therefore, perhaps it is a suitable time for a new paradigm shift where the design of the hardware is completely dictated by the design of software, and the design of the hardware is simply the matter of selecting proper IC’s and other electronic circuitry that supports the software. In this paper, we present an example of the embedded design using this software-driven design strategy. By the end of this paper, it is shown that software-driven design not only allows the rapid prototyping of embedded devices, but it reduces the possibility of design errors, as well. Keywords: Embedded design; Hardware-software codesign; Software driven design; ARM technology