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Evaluation Platform for Hardware/Software Co-Design
Design an evaluation platform for hardware/software co-design with focus on low-power systems.
Keywords: Circuit Design, Low Power Electronics, Hardware-Software Co-design
Despite microcontrollers consuming less and less energy per operation, some algorithms still take a long time to be computed and would
benefit from parallelization – either on multiple microcontroller cores or on small low-power FPGAs. In order to evaluate the energy consumption of algorithms in embedded applications, an evaluation platform is needed that supplies (artificial) sensor data, provides accurate individual power tracing of multiple supplies and allows the tracking of the algorithm output. With such a platform, different firmware designs, ranging form all microcontroller computation to mixed microcontroller/FPGA implemetations to full FPGA implementations could be compared.
**Prerequisites**
- Digital (microcontroller and FPGA) and analog circuit design
- Circuit simulation tools (Spice, ADS) and circuit design tools (e.g. Altium)
- Firmware design for microcontrollers, readout of ADCs, filter and current measurement design
- MATLAB or Python for evaluation and power trace data received from the developed hardware platform
- (optional) Sensor interface design in HDL for FPGAs
**Character**
- 10% Literature study
- 30% Circuit design
- 40% Firmware design (for microcontroller)
- 20% Measurements and validation
Despite microcontrollers consuming less and less energy per operation, some algorithms still take a long time to be computed and would benefit from parallelization – either on multiple microcontroller cores or on small low-power FPGAs. In order to evaluate the energy consumption of algorithms in embedded applications, an evaluation platform is needed that supplies (artificial) sensor data, provides accurate individual power tracing of multiple supplies and allows the tracking of the algorithm output. With such a platform, different firmware designs, ranging form all microcontroller computation to mixed microcontroller/FPGA implemetations to full FPGA implementations could be compared.
**Prerequisites**
- Digital (microcontroller and FPGA) and analog circuit design - Circuit simulation tools (Spice, ADS) and circuit design tools (e.g. Altium) - Firmware design for microcontrollers, readout of ADCs, filter and current measurement design - MATLAB or Python for evaluation and power trace data received from the developed hardware platform - (optional) Sensor interface design in HDL for FPGAs
**Character**
- 10% Literature study - 30% Circuit design - 40% Firmware design (for microcontroller) - 20% Measurements and validation
- design of a platform for energy consumption of different software/hardware configurations
- dynamically set the voltage and measure current on at least 6 independent channels with a sampling rate > 100kHz
- emulate different sensor interfaces, as well as record the output of the algorithms
- design of a platform for energy consumption of different software/hardware configurations - dynamically set the voltage and measure current on at least 6 independent channels with a sampling rate > 100kHz - emulate different sensor interfaces, as well as record the output of the algorithms
Dr. Christian Vogt (christian.vogt@pbl.ee.ethz.ch), Dr. Michele Magno (michele.magno@pbl.ee.ethz.ch)
Dr. Christian Vogt (christian.vogt@pbl.ee.ethz.ch), Dr. Michele Magno (michele.magno@pbl.ee.ethz.ch)