You are currently viewing a new version of our website. To view the old version click .
Electronics
  • This is an early access version, the complete PDF, HTML, and XML versions will be available soon.
  • Article
  • Open Access

13 December 2025

Hardware/Software Partitioning Based on Area and Memory Metrics: Application to a Fuzzy Controller Algorithm for a DC Motor

,
and
Department of Electrical Engineering, Center for Research and Advanced Studies, Campus Guadalajara, 45017 Zapopan, Jalisco, México
*
Authors to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Electronics2025, 14(24), 4908;https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics14244908 
(registering DOI)
This article belongs to the Special Issue System-on-Chip (SoC) and Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) Design, 2nd Edition

Abstract

In hardware/software (HW/SW) partitioning, the most commonly established objectives are execution time, power consumption, and hardware area. Surprisingly, memory usage, a critical resource in embedded systems, has received limited attention as a primary optimization objective. Moreover, the few studies that consider memory rarely provide an explicit, design-time estimation method. This work proposes a methodology for obtaining memory usage as a design metric, along with an objective function tailored to evaluate memory usage in systems-on-chip featuring a hard processor core and a Field-Programmable Gate Array suitable for a HW/SW partitioning problem. To validate the proposed methodology, HW/SW partitioning was carried out for a PD-type fuzzy control algorithm targeting a DC motor. The optimization problem was solved using the Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm II. The results demonstrate the feasibility and accuracy of the proposed approach, achieving more than 97.5% accuracy in predicting memory and hardware resource consumption. Additionally, the functional performance of the selected partition configuration was validated in real-time, where the tracking of different reference signals for the velocity of the motor was successfully achieved.

Article Metrics

Citations

Article Access Statistics

Article metric data becomes available approximately 24 hours after publication online.