Extending IP-XACT to embedded system HW/SW integration

TLDR: This paper presents an IP-XACT based design flow that reduces the design time to one third compared to the conventional FPGA flow, the number of automated design phases is doubled and any manual error prone data transfer between HW and SW tools is completely avoided.

Abstract: Typical MPSoC FPGA product design is a rigid waterfall process proceeding one-way from HW to SW design. Any changes to HW trigger the SW project re-creation from the beginning. When several product variations or speculative development time exploration is required, the disk bloats easily with hundreds of Board Support Package (BSP), configuration and SW project files. In this paper, we present an IP-XACT based design flow that solves the problems by agile re-use of HW and SW components, automation and single golden reference source for information. We also present new extensions to IP-XACT since the standard lacks SW related features. Three use cases demonstrate how the BSP is changed, an application is moved to another processor and a function is moved from SW implementation to a HW accelerator. Our flow reduces the design time to one third compared to the conventional FPGA flow, the number of automated design phases is doubled and any manual error prone data transfer between HW and SW tools is completely avoided.