A hardware/software partitioning algorithm for digital signal processor cores with two types of register files

This paper proposes a hardware/software partitioning algorithm for digital signal processor cores with two register files. Given a compiled assembly code and a timing constraint of execution time, the proposed algorithm generates a processor core configuration with a new assembly code running on the generated processor core. The proposed algorithm considers two register files and determines the number of registers in each of register files. Moreover the algorithm considers two or more functional units for each arithmetic or logical operation and assigns functional units with small area to a processor core without causing performance penalty. A generated processor core will have small area compared with processor cores which have a single register file or those which have only one functional unit for each operation. The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed algorithm.