The building blocks of today's and future embedded systems are complex intellectual property components, or cores, many of which are programmable processors. Traditionally, these embedded processors mostly have been pro grammed in assembly languages due to efficiency reasons. This implies time consuming programming, extensive debugging, and low code portability. The requirements of short time-to-market and dependability of embedded systems are obviously much better met by using high-level language (e.g. C) compil ers instead of assembly. However, the use of C compilers frequently incurs a code quality overhead as compared to manually written assembly programs. Due to the need for efficient embedded systems, this overhead must be very low in order to make compilers useful in practice. In turn, this requires new compiler techniques that take the specific constraints in embedded system de sign into account. An example are the specialized architectures of recent DSP and multimedia processors, which are not yet sufficiently exploited by existing compilers.

This book focuses on source-to-source code transformations that remove addressing-related overhead present in most multimedia or signal processing application programs. This approach is complementary to existing compiler technology. What is particularly attractive about the transformation flow pre sented here is that its behavior is nearly independent of the target processor platform and the underlying compiler. Hence, the different source code trans formations developed here lead to impressive performance improvements on most existing processor architecture styles, ranging from RISCs like ARM7 or MIPS over Superscalars like Intel-Pentium, PowerPC, DEC-Alpha, Sun and HP, to VLIW DSPs like TI C6x and Philips TriMedia. The source code did not have to be modified between processors to obtain these results. Apart from the performance improvements, the estimated energy is also significantly reduced for a given application run. These results were not obtained for academic codes but for realistic and rep resentative applications, all selected from the multimedia domain. That shows the industrial relevance and importance of this research. At the same time, the scientific novelty and quality of the contributions have lead to several excellent papers that have been published in internationally renowned conferences like e. g. DATE. This book is hence of interest for academic researchers, both because of the overall description of the methodology and related work context and for the detailed descriptions of the compilation techniques and algorithms.

This book proposes novel memory hierarchies and software optimization techniques for the optimal utilization of memory hierarchies. It presents a wide range of optimizations, progressively increasing in the complexity of analysis and of memory hierarchies. The final chapter covers optimization techniques for applications consisting of multiple processes found in most modern embedded devices.

Modern electronics is driven by the explosive growth of digital communications and multi-media technology. A basic challenge is to design first-time-right complex digital systems, that meet stringent constraints on performance and power dissipation. In order to combine this growing system complexity with an increasingly short time-to-market, new system design technologies are emerging based on the paradigm of embedded programmable processors. This concept introduces modularity, flexibility and re-use in the electronic system design process. However, its success will critically depend on the availability of efficient and reliable CAD tools to design, programme and verify the functionality of embedded processors. Recently, new research efforts emerged on the edge between software compilation and hardware synthesis, to develop high-quality code generation tools for embedded processors. Code Generation for Embedded Systems provides a survey of these new developments. Although not limited to these targets, the main emphasis is on code generation for modern DSP processors. Important themes covered by the book include: the scope of general purpose versus application-specific processors, machine code quality for embedded applications, retargetability of the code generation process, machine description formalisms, and code generation methodologies. Code Generation for Embedded Systems is the essential introduction to this fast developing field of research for students, researchers, and practitioners alike.

Customizable processors have been described as the next natural step in the evolution of the microprocessor business: a step in the life of a new technology where top performance alone is no longer sufficient to guarantee market success. Other factors become fundamental, such as time to market, convenience, energy efficiency, and ease of customization. This book is the first to explore comprehensively one of the most fundamental trends which emerged in the last decade: to treat processors not as rigid, fixed entities, which designers include "as is in their products; but rather, to build sound methodologies to tailor-fit processors to the specific needs of such products. This book addresses the goal of maintaining a very large family of processors, with a wide range of features, at a cost comparable to that of maintaining a single processor. - First book to present comprehensively the major ASIP design methodologies and tools without any particular bias - Written by most of the pioneers and top international experts of this young domain - Unique mix of management perspective, technical detail, research outlook, and practical implementation

This title covers all software-related aspects of SoC design, from embedded and application-domain specific operating systems to system architecture for future SoC. It will give embedded software designers invaluable insights into the constraints imposed by the use of embedded software in an SoC context.

Embedded core processors are becoming a vital part of today's system-on-a-chip in the growing areas of telecommunications, multimedia and consumer electronics. This is mainly in response to a need to track evolving standards with the flexibility of embedded software. Consequently, maintaining the high product performance and low product cost requires a careful design of the processor tuned to the application domain. With the increased presence of instruction-set processors, retargetable software compilation techniques are critical, not only for improving engineering productivity, but to allow designers to explore the architectural possibilities for the application domain. Retargetable Compilers for Embedded Core Processors, with a Foreword written by Ahmed Jerraya and Pierre Paulin, overviews the techniques of modern retargetable compilers and shows the application of practical techniques to embedded instruction-set processors. The methods are highlighted with examples from industry processors used in products for multimedia, telecommunications, and consumer electronics. An emphasis is given to the methodology and experience gained in applying two different retargetable compiler approaches in industrial settings. The book also discusses many pragmatic areas such as language support, source code abstraction levels, validation strategies, and source-level debugging. In addition, new compiler techniques are described which support address generation for DSP architecture trends. The contribution is an address calculation transformation based on an architectural model. Retargetable Compilers for Embedded Core Processors will be of interest to embedded system designers and programmers, the developers of electronic design automation (EDA) tools for embedded systems, and researchers in hardware/software co-design.

Embedded Systems: ARM Programming and Optimization, Second Edition combines an exploration of the ARM architecture with an examination of the facilities offered by the Linux operating system to explain how various features of program design can influence processor performance. The book demonstrates methods by which a programmer can optimize program code in a way that does not impact its behavior but instead improves its performance. Several applications, including image transformations, fractal generation, image convolution, computer vision tasks, and now machine learning are used to describe and demonstrate these methods. From this, the reader will gain insight into computer architecture and application design, as well as practical knowledge in embedded software design for modern embedded systems. The second edition has been expanded to include more topics of interest to upper level undergraduate courses in embedded systems. - Covers three ARM instruction set architectures, the ARMv6 and ARMv7-A, as well as three ARM cores, the ARM11 on the Raspberry Pi, Cortex-A9 on the Xilinx Zynq 7020, and Cortex-A15 on the NVIDIA Tegra K1 - Describes how to fully leverage the facilities offered by the Linux operating system, including the Linux GCC compiler toolchain and debug tools, performance monitoring support, OpenMP multicore runtime environment, video frame buffer, and video capture capabilities - Designed to accompany and work with most low-cost Linux/ARM embedded development boards currently available - Expanded to include coverage of topics such as bus architectures, low-power programming, and sensor interfacing - Includes practical application areas such as machine learning

This extensive and increasing use of embedded systems and their integration in everyday products mark a significant evolution in information science and technology. Nowadays embedded systems design is subject to seamless integration with the physical and electronic environment while meeting requirements like reliability, availability, robustness, power consumption, cost, and deadlines. Thus, embedded systems design raises challenging problems for research, such as security, reliable and mobile services, large-scale heterogeneous distributed systems, adaptation, component-based development, and validation and tool-based certification. This book results from the ARTIST FP5 project funded by the European Commision. By integration 28 leading European research institutions with many top researchers in the area, this book assesses and strategically advances the state of the art in embedded systems. The coherently written monograph-like book is a valuable source of reference for researchers active in the field and serves well as an introduction to scientists and professionals interested in learning about embedded systems design.

The vast majority of control systems built today are embedded; that is, they rely on built-in, special-purpose digital computers to close their feedback loops. Embedded systems are common in aircraft, factories, chemical processing plants, and even in cars–a single high-end automobile may contain over eighty different computers. The design of embedded controllers and of the intricate, automated communication networks that support them raises many new questions—practical, as well as theoretical—about network protocols, compatibility of operating systems, and ways to maximize the effectiveness of the embedded hardware. This handbook, the first of its kind, provides engineers, computer scientists, mathematicians, and students a broad, comprehensive source of information and technology to address many questions and aspects of embedded and networked control. Separated into six main sections—Fundamentals, Hardware, Software, Theory, Networking, and Applications—this work unifies into a single reference many scattered articles, websites, and specification sheets. Also included are case studies, experiments, and examples that give a multifaceted view of the subject, encompassing computation and communication considerations.