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H/W to S/W Interfacing Techniques
The system is to be divided into some number of hardware and software blocks with appropriate means of interconnection.
The primary ways of connecting H/W to S/W are:
- CPU coprocessor and/or custom instructions,
- Packet channel connected as coprocessor or mapped to main register file,
- Programmed I/O to pin-level GPIO register,
- Programmed I/O to FIFOs,
- Interrupts (hardwired to one core or dynamically dispatched),
- Pseudo-DMA: processor generates addresses and device snoops data,
- DMA.