Modeling and simulation of steady state and transient behaviors for emergent SoCs

We introduce a formal basis for viewing computer systems as mixed steady state and non-steady state (transient) behaviors to motivate novel design strategies resulting from simultaneous consideration of function, scheduling and architecture. We relate three design styles: hierarchical decomposition, static mapping and directed platform that have traditionally been separated. By considering them together, we argue that once a steady state system is mapped onto an architecture, the unused processing and communication power may be viewed as a platform for a transient system, ultimately resulting in more effective design approaches that ease the static mapping problem while still allowing for effective utilization of resources. Our simulation environment, frequency interleaving, mixes a formal and experimental approach as illustrated in an example.