1. Our future engineers can bridge the SW/HW Paradigm Chasm – Dirk Stroobandt – 2007-05-12 Faculty of Engineering – Electronics and Information Systems Department pag. 1 Our Future Engineers Can Bridge the Software/Hardware Paradigm Chasm Prof. Dirk Stroobandt Ghent University, PARIS group

2. Our future engineers can bridge the SW/HW Paradigm Chasm – Dirk Stroobandt – 2007-05-12 Faculty of Engineering – Electronics and Information Systems Department pag. 2 Outline

3. Our future engineers can bridge the SW/HW Paradigm Chasm – Dirk Stroobandt – 2007-05-12 Faculty of Engineering – Electronics and Information Systems Department pag. 3 Some general messages Separation of SW / HW education is bad idea Teaching HW/SW co-design is not easy It is all about making trade-offs Everything is going to be parallel

4. Our future engineers can bridge the SW/HW Paradigm Chasm – Dirk Stroobandt – 2007-05-12 Faculty of Engineering – Electronics and Information Systems Department pag. 4 Some general messages Separation of SW / HW education is bad idea Teaching HW/SW co-design is not easy It is all about making trade-offs Everything is going to be parallel

5. Our future engineers can bridge the SW/HW Paradigm Chasm – Dirk Stroobandt – 2007-05-12 Faculty of Engineering – Electronics and Information Systems Department pag. 5 Separation of HW and SW: bad idea CS departments were split from older EE departments Enormous boost in computer science: separate discipline of CS Some schools: ECS Department (growing) –Intensifies cross-disciplinary research and teaching Clear division between hardware (ASIC) design and software design no longer holds Current systems are a mixture of the two Several reasons (next slides)

6. Our future engineers can bridge the SW/HW Paradigm Chasm – Dirk Stroobandt – 2007-05-12 Faculty of Engineering – Electronics and Information Systems Department pag. 6 Reason 1: Moore’s Law

7. Our future engineers can bridge the SW/HW Paradigm Chasm – Dirk Stroobandt – 2007-05-12 Faculty of Engineering – Electronics and Information Systems Department pag. 7 Reason 1: Moore’s Law Design canyon

8. Our future engineers can bridge the SW/HW Paradigm Chasm – Dirk Stroobandt – 2007-05-12 Faculty of Engineering – Electronics and Information Systems Department pag. 8 Reason 1: Moore’s Law Reuse IP SoC (virtual components) Sceduling and arbitration are becoming more important on chip

9. Our future engineers can bridge the SW/HW Paradigm Chasm – Dirk Stroobandt – 2007-05-12 Faculty of Engineering – Electronics and Information Systems Department pag. 9 Reason 2: End of Scaling

10. Our future engineers can bridge the SW/HW Paradigm Chasm – Dirk Stroobandt – 2007-05-12 Faculty of Engineering – Electronics and Information Systems Department pag. 10 Reason 2: End of Scaling

11. Our future engineers can bridge the SW/HW Paradigm Chasm – Dirk Stroobandt – 2007-05-12 Faculty of Engineering – Electronics and Information Systems Department pag. 11 Reason 2: End of Scaling Multi- cores are hot

12. Our future engineers can bridge the SW/HW Paradigm Chasm – Dirk Stroobandt – 2007-05-12 Faculty of Engineering – Electronics and Information Systems Department pag. 12 Reason 3: The Age of Multi-core

13. Our future engineers can bridge the SW/HW Paradigm Chasm – Dirk Stroobandt – 2007-05-12 Faculty of Engineering – Electronics and Information Systems Department pag. 13 Reason 4: Demanding Applications Hardware acceleration is needed in software oriented environment

14. Our future engineers can bridge the SW/HW Paradigm Chasm – Dirk Stroobandt – 2007-05-12 Faculty of Engineering – Electronics and Information Systems Department pag. 14 Reason 5: Advent of FPGAs FPGAs have strongly enabled the trends –Much more flexible hardware infrastructure that can co-exist and cooperate with a software architecture more easily –Evolved into much more hybrid arrays –Introduction of soft cores and hard cores

15. Our future engineers can bridge the SW/HW Paradigm Chasm – Dirk Stroobandt – 2007-05-12 Faculty of Engineering – Electronics and Information Systems Department pag. 15 Tear Down the Wall Focus on hardware/software co-design Train for cross-discipline

16. Our future engineers can bridge the SW/HW Paradigm Chasm – Dirk Stroobandt – 2007-05-12 Faculty of Engineering – Electronics and Information Systems Department pag. 16 Some general messages Separation of SW / HW education is bad idea Teaching HW/SW co-design is not easy It is all about making trade-offs Everything is going to be parallel

17. Our future engineers can bridge the SW/HW Paradigm Chasm – Dirk Stroobandt – 2007-05-12 Faculty of Engineering – Electronics and Information Systems Department pag. 17 Teaching HW/SW Co-design At Ghent University: –Adopted Bachelor/Master structure (Bologna/Sorbonne: 3 – 2 – 3 structure) –Ideal time to change curricula –At Faculty of Engineering: rather drastic changes implemented

18. Our future engineers can bridge the SW/HW Paradigm Chasm – Dirk Stroobandt – 2007-05-12 Faculty of Engineering – Electronics and Information Systems Department pag. 18 Teaching HW/SW Co-design Constraints –Strong focus on mathematical background in Bachelor –Focus on learning to reason and solving problems unknown before –“think out of the box” –No narrow focus but broad base of domains

19. Our future engineers can bridge the SW/HW Paradigm Chasm – Dirk Stroobandt – 2007-05-12 Faculty of Engineering – Electronics and Information Systems Department pag. 19 Teaching HW/SW Co-design Study trajectories –At some point: split in application domains (ICT, Multimedia and Embedded Systems) ICTMMES

20. Our future engineers can bridge the SW/HW Paradigm Chasm – Dirk Stroobandt – 2007-05-12 Faculty of Engineering – Electronics and Information Systems Department pag. 20 Teaching HW/SW Co-design Study trajectories –In the end: “Electronics” and “Computer Science” (but different main subjects than before) EECS

21. Our future engineers can bridge the SW/HW Paradigm Chasm – Dirk Stroobandt – 2007-05-12 Faculty of Engineering – Electronics and Information Systems Department pag. 21 Teaching HW/SW Co-design Master of Electrical Engineering –Main subject: Electronic Circuits and Systems –Main subject: Information and Communication Technology Master of Computer Science Engineering

22. Our future engineers can bridge the SW/HW Paradigm Chasm – Dirk Stroobandt – 2007-05-12 Faculty of Engineering – Electronics and Information Systems Department pag. 22 Teaching HW/SW Co-design Master of Electrical Engineering Master of Computer Science Engineering –Main subject: Software Engineering –Main subject: Information and Communication Technology –Main subject: Embedded Systems ES: forefront of technical evolution

23. Our future engineers can bridge the SW/HW Paradigm Chasm – Dirk Stroobandt – 2007-05-12 Faculty of Engineering – Electronics and Information Systems Department pag. 23 Teaching HW/SW Co-design Pitfalls for ES main subject –Grew from inside CS curriculum –Inherited all the SW courses (Design of Distributed Software, Software architecture, etc.) –Few courses really on target –Student complaints and re-evaluation

24. Our future engineers can bridge the SW/HW Paradigm Chasm – Dirk Stroobandt – 2007-05-12 Faculty of Engineering – Electronics and Information Systems Department pag. 24 Simulation and Verification Platform design Hardware/software partitioning High level synthesis Logic design Physical design Software compilation Software compilation Interface Synthesis Interface Synthesis HWSW Hardware design Communication Component selection Component selection Testing System specification Architecture exploration Analog design Analog design

25. Our future engineers can bridge the SW/HW Paradigm Chasm – Dirk Stroobandt – 2007-05-12 Faculty of Engineering – Electronics and Information Systems Department pag. 25 Teaching HW/SW Co-design Complex Systems Design Methodology –Embedded systems, SoC and platform-based design –System specification languages –Architectures for complex systems –Exploring the design space –The importance of interconnects –The importance of embedded memory –Predicting performance –Interfaces and interface design

26. Our future engineers can bridge the SW/HW Paradigm Chasm – Dirk Stroobandt – 2007-05-12 Faculty of Engineering – Electronics and Information Systems Department pag. 26 Teaching HW/SW Co-design Hardware/Software Codesign –Design methodology and architectures –High level VLSI Design –Logic Synthesis and Physical Design –Power management on circuit level –Testing of digital systems –RTOS –Code optimization for embedded systems –Power management at system level –System-level testing

27. Our future engineers can bridge the SW/HW Paradigm Chasm – Dirk Stroobandt – 2007-05-12 Faculty of Engineering – Electronics and Information Systems Department pag. 27 Teaching HW/SW Co-design Labs –More important than theory in any design course –Closely guided labs –Attention to all design steps –In HSC: designing concrete system (Viterbi)

28. Our future engineers can bridge the SW/HW Paradigm Chasm – Dirk Stroobandt – 2007-05-12 Faculty of Engineering – Electronics and Information Systems Department pag. 28 Some general messages Separation of SW / HW education is bad idea Teaching HW/SW co-design is not easy It is all about making trade-offs Everything is going to be parallel

29. Our future engineers can bridge the SW/HW Paradigm Chasm – Dirk Stroobandt – 2007-05-12 Faculty of Engineering – Electronics and Information Systems Department pag. 29 It’s All About Trade-offs No single ES design methodology –Up to know: listing of possibilities (boring) –Good design example needed (which one?) –Limited time (breadth vs. depth)

30. Our future engineers can bridge the SW/HW Paradigm Chasm – Dirk Stroobandt – 2007-05-12 Faculty of Engineering – Electronics and Information Systems Department pag. 30 It’s All About Trade-offs Choice of performance measures –Ask the right questions –Set the right objectives –What performance measures are most important today + technology impact Power Cost TTM …

31. Our future engineers can bridge the SW/HW Paradigm Chasm – Dirk Stroobandt – 2007-05-12 Faculty of Engineering – Electronics and Information Systems Department pag. 31 It’s All About Trade-offs At which design level are trade-offs made? –First design stages: abstract but important decisions on system architecture –Not a lot is known –Lot of implementation choices –Very early relative estimates needed

32. Our future engineers can bridge the SW/HW Paradigm Chasm – Dirk Stroobandt – 2007-05-12 Faculty of Engineering – Electronics and Information Systems Department pag. 32 It’s All About Trade-offs

33. Our future engineers can bridge the SW/HW Paradigm Chasm – Dirk Stroobandt – 2007-05-12 Faculty of Engineering – Electronics and Information Systems Department pag. 33 It’s All About Trade-offs Region where refinement is needed Pareto-optimal solution Pareto front/curve Infeasible region Inferior results Delay Power

34. Our future engineers can bridge the SW/HW Paradigm Chasm – Dirk Stroobandt – 2007-05-12 Faculty of Engineering – Electronics and Information Systems Department pag. 34 Interconnect-centric design flow X=(ABCD+A+D+A(B+C)) Y=(A(B+C)+AC+D+A(BC+D)) Packaging and testing Fabrication Circuit design Physical design Logic design Functional design System specification Physical and technological a priori estimations

35. Our future engineers can bridge the SW/HW Paradigm Chasm – Dirk Stroobandt – 2007-05-12 Faculty of Engineering – Electronics and Information Systems Department pag. 35 It’s All About Trade-offs Hardware/software partitioning –Flexibility vs. computing strength –Automatically decide on HW/SW boundary without extensive simulation? –New goals are set (e.g. power)

36. Our future engineers can bridge the SW/HW Paradigm Chasm – Dirk Stroobandt – 2007-05-12 Faculty of Engineering – Electronics and Information Systems Department pag. 36 It’s All About Trade-offs Flexibility vs. performance –Full performance: ASIC, high cost, not flexible –Full flexibility:  P, good on average only –FPGAs fill the space in between flexible Hardware-oriented approach: good performance Dedicated blocks and soft and hard cores Leaves a lot of implementation options on the table Good (and cheap) for educational purposes

37. Our future engineers can bridge the SW/HW Paradigm Chasm – Dirk Stroobandt – 2007-05-12 Faculty of Engineering – Electronics and Information Systems Department pag. 37 Some general messages Separation of SW / HW education is bad idea Teaching HW/SW co-design is not easy It is all about making trade-offs Everything is going to be parallel

38. Our future engineers can bridge the SW/HW Paradigm Chasm – Dirk Stroobandt – 2007-05-12 Faculty of Engineering – Electronics and Information Systems Department pag. 38 Parallelism: the forgotten paradigm Parallelism in computers is old –Remember the transputers (’70s) –Still intrinsically sequential programming

39. Our future engineers can bridge the SW/HW Paradigm Chasm – Dirk Stroobandt – 2007-05-12 Faculty of Engineering – Electronics and Information Systems Department pag. 39 Parallelism: the forgotten paradigm Trend towards multi-core –Also SW engineering will have to embrace low-level fine-grain parallelism –Remember Amdahl’s law –No longer thread-level or instruction-level but real data-level parallelism (massivily parallel at low level)

40. Our future engineers can bridge the SW/HW Paradigm Chasm – Dirk Stroobandt – 2007-05-12 Faculty of Engineering – Electronics and Information Systems Department pag. 40 The “Software Crisis”

41. Our future engineers can bridge the SW/HW Paradigm Chasm – Dirk Stroobandt – 2007-05-12 Faculty of Engineering – Electronics and Information Systems Department pag. 41 No longer a chasm between SW/HW It’s all parallel So teach all students to think structurally parallel (whatever their major)

42. Our future engineers can bridge the SW/HW Paradigm Chasm – Dirk Stroobandt – 2007-05-12 Faculty of Engineering – Electronics and Information Systems Department pag. 42 Is this Paradigm Shift Impossible? It has happened before –Object-oriented programming Only way to manage large SW projects Based on modularity (kind of parallel) –Aspect-oriented programming Separation of concerns

43. Our future engineers can bridge the SW/HW Paradigm Chasm – Dirk Stroobandt – 2007-05-12 Faculty of Engineering – Electronics and Information Systems Department pag. 43 Main focus on concepts Mostly streams of date Three common models: –Kahn Process Networks –Synchronous Data Flow –Communicating Sequential Processes

44. Our future engineers can bridge the SW/HW Paradigm Chasm – Dirk Stroobandt – 2007-05-12 Faculty of Engineering – Electronics and Information Systems Department pag. 44 Main focus on concepts

45. Our future engineers can bridge the SW/HW Paradigm Chasm – Dirk Stroobandt – 2007-05-12 Faculty of Engineering – Electronics and Information Systems Department pag. 45 Big concern: what language? HDLs? –Much better facilities for describing parallelism –Lack benefits of modern SW languages (OO, refactoring) SystemC, SystemVerilog? –Who will say?

46. Our future engineers can bridge the SW/HW Paradigm Chasm – Dirk Stroobandt – 2007-05-12 Faculty of Engineering – Electronics and Information Systems Department pag. 46 New abstraction level: ESL Designer should be relieved from burden –(semi-)automatically translate discription in multi-core SW or HW –Lot of research left here (difficult for teaching)

47. Our future engineers can bridge the SW/HW Paradigm Chasm – Dirk Stroobandt – 2007-05-12 Faculty of Engineering – Electronics and Information Systems Department pag. 47 What to take home? Separation of SW / HW education is bad idea Teaching HW/SW co-design is not easy It is all about making trade-offs Everything is going to be parallel

48. Our future engineers can bridge the SW/HW Paradigm Chasm – Dirk Stroobandt – 2007-05-12 Faculty of Engineering – Electronics and Information Systems Department pag. 48