Hardware/software co-design
methodology of designing hardware and software together
Hardware/software co-design (often shortened as HW/SW co-design) is a system-level design methodology in which hardware and software components are developed together rather than in isolation. Its goal is to improve system-level metrics such as performance, power consumption, cost, and flexibility by trying out different ways of splitting functionality between hardware and software early in the design.
Hardware/Software co-design is widely used in embedded systems, cyber-physical systems, and heterogeneous computing platforms, where software execution and hardware acceleration need to work closely together.
Overview
Hardware/software co-design is based on the principle that hardware and software constraints are considered at the same time, so that decisions on one side can be made with the other in mind. A function can be placed either in software on a processor or in dedicated hardware logic, with effects on performance, power, area, and cost at the same time. By keeping both sides open during early design, co-design explores combinations that a one-sided approach would miss.
In co-design, the boundary between hardware and software is treated as a design variable. Computationally heavy, regular work is given a dedicated hardware implementation, while control logic and anything likely to change remains in software. The parameters that define this split, such as bit widths, buffer sizes, and the degree of parallelism, are shared between the two sides rather than fixed independently.
History
Hardware/software co-design took shape in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when embedded systems were growing more complex and the usual practice of designing hardware and software separately began to break down.
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