Integrated System-Level Modeli

TradiTIonally, embedded applicaTIons in the mulTImedia, wireless communicaTIonsor networking domain have been implemented on Printed Circuit Boards(PCBs). PCB systems are composed of discrete Integrated Circuits (ICs) likeGeneral Purpose Processors, Digital Signal Processors, Application SpecificIntegrated Circuits, memories, and further peripherals. The communicationbetween the discrete processing elements and memories is realized by sharedbus architectures.The ongoing progress in silicon technology fosters the transition from boardlevelintegration towards System-on-Chip (SoC) implementations of embeddedapplications. According to the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors[2], by the end of the decade SoCs will grow to 4 billion transistorsrunning at 10 GHz and operating below one volt. Already today multiple heterogeneous processing elements and memories can be integrated on a singlechip to increase performance and to reduce cost and improve energy efficiency[3].The growing potential for silicon integration is even outpaced by the amountof functionality incorporated into embedded devices from all kinds of applicationdomains. This trend originates from the tremendous increase in features aswell as the multitude of co-existing standards. The resulting functional complexityclearly promotes Software enabled solutions to achieve the requiredflexibility and cope with the demanding time-to-market conditions. However,the stringent energy efficiency constraints of mobile applications and cost sensitive consumer devices prohibit the use of general purpose processors. Instead,the tight cost and performance requirements of versatile embedded systems leadto application specific heterogeneous multi-processor architectures [4, 5].