Hardware/Software Design and Development Process

In today's extremely competitive, technically challenging and cost sensitive market place, the design process must be reviewed to shorten the design time and remove the expenses associated with building engineering development controllers. Embedded system software is steadily increasing in size and sophistication, as well as the complexity of the hardware and environmental interfaces which adversely impacts the Embedded Control Unit (ECU) time-to-market and quality. To remedy the increasing complexity, the trade-offs between software and hardware can now be investigated via concurrent development early in the design cycle. Virtual systems provide a method to evaluate the interaction of microprocessors, memories, peripheral devices as well as software prior to hardware realization. This paper discusses and demonstrates the productivity improvements that can be realized using new virtual system design tools and methodologies to enhance the traditional design process.