A method determines a configuration for inter-processor communication for a heterogeneous multi-processor system. The method determines at least one subgraph of a graph representing communication between processors of the heterogeneous multi-processor system. For each subgraph the method (i) determines a plurality of subgraph design points. Each subgraph design point has a variation of channel mapping between any two of the processors in the subgraph by selecting from first-in-first-out (FIFO) memory and shared cache, and varying the shared cache and a local memory associated with at least one of the processors according to the channel mapping; and (ii) selects a memory solution for the subgraph, based on a cost associated with the selected memory solution. The method then determines a configuration for the graph of the heterogeneous multi-processor system, based on the selected memory solutions, to determine the configuration for inter-processor communication for the heterogeneous multi-processor system.