Modeling and design description of hierarchical hardware/software systems

摘要

Two fairly recent trends, one technological and one philosophical, are influencing to an increasing degree the design of digital systems today.

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The plummeting cost of integrated circuits, the availability of bipolar control stores, and more recently, of bipolar microprocessor elements have resulted in the hardware or firmware implementation of functions which have traditionally been realized in software, and the firmware or software realization of functions traditionally implemented in hardware. Designers of computer systems are faced with the choice of implementing file handling functions, telecommunication service functions, floating point units, and even parts of scheduling algorithms in either hardware, software, or a combination of both.