An open-source tool set enabling analog-digital-software co-design

Abstract

This paper presents an analog-digital hardware-software co-design environment for simulating and programming reconfigurable systems. The tool simulates, designs, as well as enables experimental measurements after compiling to configurable systems in the same integrated design tool framework. High level software in Scilab/Xcos (open-source programs similar to MATLAB/Simulink) that converts the high-level block description by the user to blif format (sci2blif), which acts as an input to the modified VPR tool, including the code vpr2swcs, encoding the specific platform through specific architecture files, resulting in a targetable switch list on the resulting configurable analog-digital system. The resulting tool uses an analog and mixed-signal library of components, enabling users and future researchers access to the basic analog operations/computations that are possible.