Since the complexity and functionality of the computer systems being built is increasing at a dramatic rate, it is very difficult for custom systems to be designed, built, and tested within an acceptable time period even with the most advanced computer-aided design tools. However, many systems also have time critical parts which must be implemented in hardware. Based on this concept, a practical system would like to use as many as off-shelf processors with the minimum specialized hardware to satisfy given area and time constraints. We call the systems built with this design style the HMS (Hardware/Multi-Software) codesign.
Automation tools have being built to support this design style and five papers were published including 2 journal papers. The framework considered performs co-design for iterative loops, given an input specification that includes the system to be built, the number of available processors, the total chip area, and the required response time. We also developed a technique that enables a design to have arbitrarily high throughput by using multi-dimensional retiming techniques while adjusting the composition of hardware and multiple software elements in order to satisfy the area requirements.