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Electronic System-Level Development: Finding the Right Mix of Solutions for the Right Mix of EngineersCompany: Byte Paradigm Any electronic system level (ESL) development approach aims at developing a system at an abstraction level located above the traditional hardware (RTL) and software levels. At the end of the process the specified system functionalities are optimally partitioned onto a set of hardware and software computational resources. This "top-down" approach is opposed to to traditional "bottom-up" methodologies, where the software is built after hardware availability, with very little interactions between the software and the hardware development teams. Before ESL has become a major concern to fill the so-called "electronic productivity gap," engineers have been developing systems for long, often with a mix of a top-down and bottomup approaches. After all, ESL is nothing but translating the system specifications on a very formal way. Good and well-implemented ESL techniques are believed to be a solution to make better system, in shorter time, that ensures a good legacy for system evolution. Whereas this concept is well understood, nobody would claim that ESL methodologies are today widely deployed or that there is one single way to implement them. To further analyze this, let’s have a closer look at who the system engineer is, and what type of system he develops. | |
Reprinted from SOCcentral.com, your first stop for ASIC, FPGA, EDA, and IP news and design information. | |