Generation of Hardware/Software Systems Based on CAL Dataflow Description

This chapter presents a new development of rapid prototyping tools for system design based on data-flow specifications. In this context, the efficiency of tools for the automatic translation from the data-flow programs to C and/or HDL are assessed by means of two design cases. The chapter also introduces the new concept of the automatic synthesis of interfaces. Such generic interfaces are implemented by using an embedded microprocessor, which can support a large variety of interfaces already available as native IP libraries in the case of FPGA. The two design cases described here have been developed, tested and validated on different implementation platforms. The results of the assessment show that flexibility, genericity and generality are attractive.