Analytical cost estimation for embedded systems

Abstract

In the today's market of microcontrollers and FPGAs, there are so much different makes and models that making the right choice for a hardware platform for an electronics design is impossible. The spectrum is so wide that an electronics designer is unable to make a good choice for the best microcontroller or FPGA for his/her design based on the information provided by the manufacturers. To fulfill this need, this thesis presents a method of analyzing a range of hardware targets and C code. The models made of the targets and code provide an accurate prediction of the execution time of the code for each target. With this information the performance of the algorithm on a range of hardware targets can be analyzed in a minimum amount of time. Performance is not the only measure, power is just as important. Therefore, with the performance information and the design requirements the minimum clock speed is calculated. Then using the power consumption models made in this thesis, the power consumption of each hardware platform can be calculated. With the methods provided in this thesis, the designer can easily determine the performance and power consumption of a range of hardware platforms and make the right choice in an affordable amount of time.