The hardware-software co-design process often involves specialists with different expertise, sometimes struggling to see the big picture. To gain a comprehensive understanding of solution effectiveness and efficiency, design space exploration is crucial. However, it typically involves lengthy simulations or custom developments, posing significant time and resource challenges.

In this presentation, we introduce X-HEEP's FEMU, an open-source platform designed to address these challenges. FEMU enables rapid prototyping of complete applications by leveraging hardware emulation and energy estimations, powered by an FPGA implementation of the open-hardware X-HEEP MCU. Our focus will be on showcasing the virtualization of an ADC (analog-to-digital converter) to evaluate acquisition applications. This demonstration allows real-time configuration of application, hardware, and software parameters, offering insights into latency issues and facilitating informed decision-making in the co-design process.

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