A SoC Design Exploration Algorithm Based on Branch-and-Bound and List Scheduling

As the electronic systems got more and more complicated,automatic design methods are needed to find the best solution.A design exploration algorithm based on branch-and-bound and list scheduling is proposed.The algorithm has architecture of three stages.At the first and second stage the module selection and sharing schemes are explored by the branch-and-bound method,while the list scheduling method is used to schedule the tasks in the third stage.Multiple module choices for the tasks are considered,and all the module sharing possibilities are fully explored.Several tests have been made for various task graphs of different scales.The performance of this algorithm is compared with those existing methods.The results indicate that for systems of small or medium scale with the list scheduling strategy the proposed algorithm can find the best solution in a short time.