Hardware-software partitioning of real-time operating systems using Hopfield neural networks

The hardware-software automated partitioning of a real-time operating system in the system-on-a-chip (SoC-RTOS partitioning) is a NP-complete problem, and a crucial step in the hardware-software co-design of SoC. In this paper, a new model for SoC-RTOS partitioning is introduced, which can help in understanding the essence of the SoC-RTOS partitioning. A discrete Hopfield neural network approach for implementing the SoC-RTOS partitioning is proposed, where a novel energy function, operating equation and coefficients of the neural network are redefined. Simulations are carried out with comparison to other optimization techniques. Experimental results demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.