The development of embedded systems in information-rich contexts is governed by some intertwined trends. The increase of both volume of data to be processed and the related processing functionality feeds the growing complexity of applications. Independently, the processing hardware that is needed to process these applications, is becoming increasingly parallel and heterogeneous (many-core) because of performance and power problems. Furthermore, today's compiler technology is not able to translate sequential legacy code for multi-core or many-core systems in an efficient way. This thesis addresses the problem of generating efficient code for a number of cores, that operate synchronously. Examples are Single Instruction Multiple Data (SIMD) and Very Long Instruction Word (VLIW) architectures. In this thesis we restrict ourselves to architectures that include a control processor that provides the instruction stream. In practice the manufacturers of such many-core processors only provide a C-compiler that supports hardware intrinsic instructions. This situation usually requires manual adaptation of sequential code. Unfortunately, a first feedback of the implementation on the targeted parallel architecture only comes late in the development trajectory. Moreover, during implementation phases more engineers enter the project and this increases the risk of early errors proliferating to later phases. Although some parts of the system can be modelled in high level language(s) (e.g., MATLAB), the typical approach lacks a single integral and executable framework allowing for an immediate system-wide verification. This thesis proposes an integral design methodology, named IRIS, for the development of firmware for many-core architectures. The methodology is illustrated by three cases: a colour image processing pipeline for a printer, stochastic image quantisation, and data mining of dynamic document spaces. For the three cases the various development phases and the associated development roles result in mathematical models, that can be directly Hacking. Roger, thanks for your support. One of the next steps was the selection of a suitable research group and professor, and mid 90s I met Thijs Krol at the University of Twente (UT). Although the meeting did not result in concrete plans, it led to the right scientific place and a free meal in the Bastille. Thijs, thanks for the good advice. It was for Roelof Hamberg, that achieving a doctor's degree-as part of a liaison assignment with the UT-became a topic within Océ. Roelof, many thanks for your belief in me. I learned that communication of one's dreams is necessary before any strategic enterprise can start! Now, almost at the end of this enterprise, I want to express my gratitude to Gerard Smit and Jan Kuper. Gerard's constant commitment, notably the conscientiously reviewing of texts (papers, thesis) leading to to-the-point criticism and-most of all-the encouraging way of coaching, made my PhD study both a challenging and a rewarding process. Jan showed me how to (re)model a pr...
