Application modeling description language for reconfigurable co-processor computing

Abstract

Growing demands on functionality in today's electronic products are leading to an increasing shift towards developing in-system programmable hardware, to increase design flexibility. As a result, the development of embedded applications is becoming more and more important. As part of the "Embedded Research Architectures for Co-Design Environments" (ERACE) project, we developed the Application Description Language (ADL) which is a new kind of powerful language that enables embedded system users to model applications that can utilize the advantages provided by embedded systems, and its translator which translates ADL provided by the user into application source code. Note that in the traditional model, this is the source code that would be compiled and executed on a host processor. We then present it to the Just-In-Time compiler, which prepares the source code for the reconfiguration flow and application flow of the system. The ADL project that included the Application Description Language, Translator, and a Destination Language are named "PACO v0.1". The Destination Language was chosen to be ANSI C language, although it can be any other high level programming language. The PACO v0.1 system was developed using LEX & YACC. Any application that looks for patterns in its input, or has an input or command language is suitable for development using LEX & YACC. When the user inputs instructions based on the PACO ADL grammar (syntax), the PACO translator will translate it into C source code, which will be sent to a profiler for further processing. In PACO v0.1, we provide some features such as scientific calculations, logic algebra, matrix computations, and programming logic-control flow performance.