EMBEDDED SYSTEM DESIGN FLOW:

System specifications:

Design of any system starts at its specifications

Specification uses a language,which may be simple English,some
programming language like c,or it may be some formal technique

usingPertinent,state chat and so on.

The processes do interact between themselves to realize the overall
functionality of the system. The individual process canbe realized byGeneral

purpose processor or through dedicated processor.

A general purpose processor will have software implementation of the task,
while a dedicated processor can be implemented on FPGA(field
programmable gate array) or ASIC (application specific integrated circuit ) ,

to have better performance.

However,the decision regarding hardware or software implementation is also

often determined by the availability of pre-designedmodules.

Such modules form the system level library consisting of complete system

solutions to previously designed or written programs.

System specifications are normally verified by using some formal tools
known as model simulator/checkers .these tools prepare a modelof the
entire system using some mathematical logic.

Behavioral specification:

System specification refines to behavioral specification by the system

synthesis tool.
For each of the processes , a behavioral specification is obtained
As noted earlier , some of the processes are marked for software
implementation on general purpose processor, while some others are on

dedicated hardware.
Individual simulation of the only hardwired only software cannot bring out
the total picture of the system. Thus a joint simulation strategy is needed.

Register transfer specification:

This is achieved through the refinement of behavioral specification.

Here behavioral specification for software processes ( general purpose) , and

for hardware process (dedicated hardware realization) mapped individually.

For the processes mapped onto general purpose processor , the software code

is translated to the assembly/machine language

Instructions .it may be noted that a process defines operations at register-

transfer level only.

On the other hand , for the dedicated hardware realization, synthesis tools

(commonly known as high level synthesis tools ) convert t he

Behavioralspecifications into a net list of library components.
This library includes description about RT components that may be used in

the design at RT level. For example registers, counters, ALUs etc.

RT specifications can be verified by using RTL simulators normally available
to simulate descriptions in hardware description languages, such as VHDL,
Verilogetc.

Logic specifications:

Logic specification stage requires only for dedicated processors only for the
processes mapped onto general purpose processor, for which software code

has been generated, no refinement is needed at this stage.

The specification of the dedicated processors is converted to logic

specification.
The logic specification consists of Boolean equations.
The equations can now be converted into final implementation in some

target technology.
Gate level simulators can be used to simulate the logic specification in terms
of gates present in the circuit.