Co-Design Imperative: Performance Evaluation

Performance (speed, energy/memory consumption) is often a major concern in the co-design of HW/SW systems
What makes this especially difficult is the fact that decisions are often made early and are difficult to change (e.g. architectural partitioning of the system) and have a big impact on the system performance while performance is difficult to evaluate and measure before the system is actually built

Being able to evaluate performance of the system as early as possible and throughout the design process is therefore a key co-design imperative

Following table lists all TWINS solutions and experience reports that address this co-design imperative.

ESSENTIAL ACTIVITIES	CO-DESIGN IMPERATIVE: Performance Evaluation
Requirements Management	NonNon-functional Requirements
Solutions	no solution available no solution available
Experience Reports
Architecture	Architectural Quantification
Solutions	Exploiting System Re-configurability to Minimize HW/SW Co-Design Risk The objective of the approach was to exploit the re-configurability of a programmable part being present in the system to verify/debug/optimize as much as possible the HW part of the system without the need for the final (embedded) SW part to be ready. A clear rendezvous point was created to ensure seamless inter-team operation More details on the solution page
Experience Reports	Exploiting System Re-configurability to Minimize HW/SW Co-Design Risk The objective of the approach was to exploit the re-configurability of a programmable part being present in the system to verify/debug/optimize as much as possible the HW part of the system without the need for the final (embedded) SW part to be ready. A clear rendezvous point was created to ensure seamless inter-team operation More details on the solution page Schneider-Electric using SystemC CABA models Schneider-Electric experienced the use of SystemC CABA models to quantify possible gains (e.g. decrease of the CPU load, etc...) between different possible architectures
HW/SW simulation & emulation	Early Performance Evaluation
Solutions	NeoFlow NeoFlow is a simulation tool which combines physical (mechanical) modelling and control logic More details on the solution page SysEmulator SysEmulator is a HIL (Hardware In the Loop) testbed for testing embedded software agains a model of electromechanics More details on the solution page Scaleo TWINS emulation platform "The Scaleo TWINS emulation platform allows to prototype a system-on-chip and execute/test its embedded software; it provides a low cost prototype for performance evaluation" SIL, Software In the Loop, Simulation Set-up to test printer control software against a model of the physical engine SIL, Software In the Loop, Simulation A tool/environment to simulate the part of a printer that creates the toner image and puts it on paper Simulation Visualisation Prototype Printer Visualisation Prototype Printer Visualisation Visualisation of a printer simulation Prototype Printer Visualisation Interactive Visualisation Performance Visualisation Visualisation of performance measurements Exploiting System Re-configurability to Minimize HW/SW Co-Design Risk The objective of the approach was to exploit the re-configurability of a programmable part being present in the system to verify/debug/optimize as much as possible the HW part of the system without the need for the final (embedded) SW part to be ready. A clear rendezvous point was created to ensure seamless inter-team operation More details on the solution page Cosimulation between SystemC and Simulink Cosimulation between SystemC and Simulink: knock use case SystemC HW Modeling SystemC TLM/TLM-T Simulation Platform SystemC TLM/TLM-T Simulation Platform facilitates the use of the SystemC standard for the rapid design of software/hardware system prototypes and a more extensive design space exploration More details on the solution page
Experience Reports	NeoFlow NeoFlow is a simulation tool which combines physical (mechanical) modelling and control logic More details on the solution page SysEmulator SysEmulator is a HIL (Hardware In the Loop) testbed for testing embedded software agains a model of electromechanics More details on the solution page Scaleo TWINS emulation platform "The Scaleo TWINS emulation platform allows to prototype a system-on-chip and execute/test its embedded software; it provides a low cost prototype for performance evaluation" SIL, Software In the Loop, Simulation A tool/environment to simulate the part of a printer that creates the toner image and puts it on paper Exploiting System Re-configurability to Minimize HW/SW Co-Design Risk The objective of the approach was to exploit the re-configurability of a programmable part being present in the system to verify/debug/optimize as much as possible the HW part of the system without the need for the final (embedded) SW part to be ready. A clear rendezvous point was created to ensure seamless inter-team operation More details on the solution page Cosimulation between SystemC and Simulink Cosimulation between SystemC and Simulink: knock use case SystemC HW Modeling SystemC TLM/TLM-T Simulation Platform SystemC TLM/TLM-T Simulation Platform facilitates the use of the SystemC standard for the rapid design of software/hardware system prototypes and a more extensive design space exploration More details on the experience report pages: 1, 2, 3
Verification and validation	Performance Measurement
Solutions	SIL/HIL prototype Set-up to test printer control software against a model of the physical engine Simulating a printing process for verifying embedded control software A tool/environment to simulate the part of a printer that creates the toner image and puts it on paper Prototype printer visualization A prototype visualization tool for a test environment, with which software testers can follow the sheet behaviour in a simulated print engine and can manually influence the objects in the simulated paper path Visualization of a printer simulation A visualization tool for a simulation environment, with which software testers visually observe the behavior of a simulated print engine Interactive visualization A visualization tool for a simulation environment, with which software testers visually interact with the behavior of a simulated print engine Visualization of performance measurements The tool provides graphical renderings of performance measurements Fixing Reliability Issues of Existing Thermal Printer Electronics The issues with this thermal printer were successfully solved. The key to the solution was proper documentation, improving design quality, the introduction of DFT structures and last but not least, proper coaching and cooperation of interdisciplinary design teams More details on the solution page Exploiting System Re-configurability to Minimize HW/SW Co-Design Risk The objective of the approach was to exploit the re-configurability of a programmable part being present in the system to verify/debug/optimize as much as possible the HW part of the system without the need for the final (embedded) SW part to be ready. A clear rendezvous point was created to ensure seamless inter-team operation More details on the solution page
Experience Reports	SIL, Software In the Loop, Simulation Set-up to test printer control software against a model of the physical engine Fixing Reliability Issues of Existing Thermal Printer Electronics The issues with this thermal printer were successfully solved. The key to the solution was proper documentation, improving design quality, the introduction of DFT structures and last but not least, proper coaching and cooperation of interdisciplinary design teams More details on the solution page Exploiting System Re-configurability to Minimize HW/SW Co-Design Risk The objective of the approach was to exploit the re-configurability of a programmable part being present in the system to verify/debug/optimize as much as possible the HW part of the system without the need for the final (embedded) SW part to be ready. A clear rendezvous point was created to ensure seamless inter-team operation More details on the solution page
Management	Requirements Traceability
Solutions	Fixing Reliability Issues of Existing Thermal Printer Electronics The issues with this thermal printer were successfully solved. The key to the solution was proper documentation, improving design quality, the introduction of DFT structures and last but not least, proper coaching and cooperation of interdisciplinary design teams More details on the solution page Exploiting System Re-configurability to Minimize HW/SW Co-Design Risk The objective of the approach was to exploit the re-configurability of a programmable part being present in the system to verify/debug/optimize as much as possible the HW part of the system without the need for the final (embedded) SW part to be ready. A clear rendezvous point was created to ensure seamless inter-team operation More details on the solution page
Experience Reports	Fixing Reliability Issues of Existing Thermal Printer Electronics The issues with this thermal printer were successfully solved. The key to the solution was proper documentation, improving design quality, the introduction of DFT structures and last but not least, proper coaching and cooperation of interdisciplinary design teams More details on the solution page Exploiting System Re-configurability to Minimize HW/SW Co-Design Risk The objective of the approach was to exploit the re-configurability of a programmable part being present in the system to verify/debug/optimize as much as possible the HW part of the system without the need for the final (embedded) SW part to be ready. A clear rendezvous point was created to ensure seamless inter-team operation More details on the solution page