A Design of Solution Architect for an Embedded System Application

A Design of Solution Architect for an Embedded System Application



A Design of Solution Architect for an Embedded System Application

Abstract

The development of reconfigurable embedded systems has to be discussed in the broader context of general embedded system development. An embedded system (unlike a stand-alone computer) is an inseparable part of a certain larger (embedding) system. It is built into this larger system and especially designed or adapted to serve a specific aim in this system. The aim it serves is strictly related to the application or application class the embedding system serves.

Introduction

Numerous embedded system and scientific computation projects have demonstrated that heterogeneous reconfigurable systems, exploiting a mixture of traditional CPU-centric instruction-stream-based processing and decentralized parallel application-specific data-dominated processing, provide drastically higher performance and lower power consumption than traditional CPU-centric previous termsystems. Moreover, they do it at much lower costs and shorter times to market than non-reconfigurable hardware solutions. They also provide the flexibility that is often required for the engineering of modern robust and adaptive systems. Due to their heterogeneity, flexibility and potential for highly optimized application-specific instantiation, reconfigurable computing (RC) systems are adequate for a very broad class of applications across different industry sectors. For many application areas, the heterogeneous parallel reconfigurable systems can be even several orders of magnitude faster, while consuming several times less power than the traditional CPU-based systems (R. Jayaseelan, H. Liu, T. Mitra, 2006, 43-56)

System Design Approaches to Embedded Systems

Consequently, an embedded system is application-specific; it repeatedly executes particular computation processes required by its application or application class, and it has to be especially designed or customized to adequately serve the execution of these particular computation processes, as well as adequately satisfy specific application constraints and objectives. Typically, embedded systems are reactive real-time systems that involve in their implementation various mixtures of digital and analog hardware, as well as, hardware-dependent and embedded software. They are very difficult to develop. They must appropriately react in real-time to the signals from their surroundings and to be fine-tuned to particular applications by satisfying application-specific constraints and objectives related to such attributes as functional behaviour, reaction speed and throughput, power and energy consumption, geometrical dimensions, price, etc. (R. Jayaseelan, H. Liu, T. Mitra, 2006, 43-56)

Moreover, the operation domains, roles and complexity of the embedded microelectronic systems more and more resemble the operation domains, roles and complexity of (parts of) the (intelligent) life organisms or organized populations of such organisms. In the authors proposed to extensively exploit this parallel for the development of embedded systems. He formulated the hypothesis that future embedded microelectronic systems should have characteristics that resemble the characteristics of (intelligent) life organisms or their organized populations. Consequently, the basic concepts, principles, functional and structural organization, etc. of embedded microelectronic systems should resemble these of (intelligent) life organisms or their populations. “Resemble” does not of course mean to be identical. Although in microelectronic system development we should be much more inspired by life organisms than until now, ...