Transparent IP Cores Integration Based on the Distributed Object Paradigm

A metaprogrammed C++ framework for hardware/software component integration and communication

“…Another approach is to fully rely on mechanisms implemented in external tools to generate the hardware/software communicating glue [1,16]. Although this usually provides a more automated design flow, it creates a strong dependence between specific tools and the input source code and models.…”

“…This is performed by creating software stubs for hardware components. These stubs are similar to the proxies of [16] and convert method calls to commands that are send to the respective hardware components. Nevertheless, similar to the works mentioned previously, in [8] the software and hardware implementation of the component itself follow different methodologies.…”

“…The idea of using proxy/skeleton to abstract the implementation domain of objects is very similar to the proxy/agent approach used in our work. However [16] focus on RTL as the basis for hardware design. Only software is implemented using C++ and OOP.…”

“…In this sense, it is worth mentioning that most of the aforementioned works also rely on Xilinx's tools. For instance, [9,10,16,21] provide some degree of integration with Xilinx's tools and its platform-based design flow. In our work, however, we chose to keep our proposed mechanisms as independent as possible from specific tools and methodologies.…”

“…The work of Rincón et al [16] follows an OOP approach and introduces concepts from distributed objects platforms such as CORBA [17] and Java RMI [18]. Remote objects are represented by proxies that define a method call interface, while skeletons wrap objects to create an interface that couples with the RMI messages generated by proxies.…”