Visitor-based application analysis methodology for early design space exploration

Abstract

Applications and architectures for embedded systems are becoming more and more complex. It is difficult to analyze complex embedded applications at early stages of the design flow without generic automated tools and methodologies. Consequently, application analysis under the real input conditions is becoming more and more important. Existing application analysis methodologies mainly focus on a single design objective. A general purpose application analysis methodology is required to satisfy multiple objectives of early design space exploration. This article proposes a general purpose application analysis methodology based on a visitor design pattern. High level source specifications are transformed into a trace tree representation by dynamic analysis. Trace tree representation is analyzed by using a visitor design pattern to get run-time characteristics of the application. Among other outcomes, application characterization and average inherited parallelism are key concerns in this article. Experimental results with MPEG-2 video decoder shows viability of the proposed methodology.