Teaching Hardware/Software Co-design of Embedded Systems - a Case Study

With expanding proliferation of embedded systems the demand for qualified engineers to design them increases. In response to raised interest many computing curricula have been subject to change in order to expand the embedded systems topics. To meet the challenges of real embedded development, the students should be trained in applying the hardware/software co-design as a key to ensure a successful final product and to reduce costs and design time. This paper presents a case study describing an undergraduate course project involving design of a simple, but realistic embedded system using hardware/software co-design approach. It demonstrates how Specification and Description Language (SDL) can be used to model the structure and behavior of the system, as well as to help the partitioning and allocation tasks in the design flow. Conclusions of the impact of using the hardware/software co-design method in the embedded system design projects on raising students' interest and understanding are outlined.