Hardware/Software Design Partition.

When designing a sub-system we must choose what to have as hardware, what to have as software and whether custom or standard processors are needed.

When designing the compelete SoC we must think about sharing of sub-system load over processors.

Example: if we are desiging a digital camera, how many processors should it have and can the steadicam and motion estimation processing be done in software ?

• The functions of a system can be expressed in a programming language or similar form and this can be compiled fully to hardware or left partly as software
• Choosing what to do in hardware and what to do in software is a key decision. Hardware gives speed (throughput) but software supports complexity.
• Partitioning of logic over chips or processors is motivated by speed, technology and module reuse.