ASCENT: An Algorithmic Technique for Designing Hardware and Software in Tandem

Search-based software engineering is an emerging paradigm that uses automated search algorithms to help designers iteratively find solutions to complicated design problems. For example, when designing a climate monitoring satellite, designers may want to use the minimal amount of computing hardware to reduce weight and cost, while supporting the image processing algorithms running onboard. A key problem in these situations is that the hardware and software design are locked in a tightly-coupled cost-constrained producer/consumer relationship that makes it hard to find a good hardware/software design configuration. Search-based software engineering can be used to apply algorithmic techniques to automate the search for hardware/software designs that maximize the image processing accuracy while respecting cost constraints. This paper provides the following contributions to research on searchbased software engineering: (1) we show how a cost-constrained producer/consumer problem can be mod...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2010
• Where: TSE
• Authors: Jules White, Brian Doughtery, Douglas C. Schmidt
• Keywords: Artificial Intelligence, Designs, Search-based Software Engineering, Solution, TSE 2010