A tool box to map system level communications on HW/SW architectures

We present a hardware and software tool box that allows to map an initial specification done in term of tasks communicating through FIFOs onto a HW/SW architecture. Communication templates are used to characterize the way data are exchanged between tasks realized either in software or in hardware. From these templates, we define the specifications-in terms of resources necessary to handle the communications-of a hardware module and a set of software drivers. These interface modules and their software counterparts allow simple virtual component reuse since they not only implement protocol compatibility through the use of the VCI/OCB standard but also system level communications through semantics widely accepted in the design community. The interface modules have been used in the COSY project for the implementation of a video decoder by Philips starting from a system-level description and performing communication refinement using Cadence VCC and Philips' own communication schemes.