Rigorous system level modeling and analysis of mixed HW/SW systems

• Published in: 2011 9th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Formal Methods and Models for Codesign pp. 11 - 20
• Main Authors: Bourgos, P., Basu, A., Bozga, M., Bensalem, S., Sifakis, J., Huang, K.
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 01.07.2011
• Subjects: Analytical models; Application software; Computer architecture; Hardware; Indexes; Program processors
• ISBN: 9781457701177; 1457701170
• DOI: 10.1109/MEMCOD.2011.5970506

A grand challenge in complex embedded systems design is developing methods and tools for modeling and analyzing the behavior of an application software running on multicore or distributed platforms. We propose a rigorous method and a tool chain that allows to obtain a faithful model representing the behavior of a mixed hardware/software system from a model of its application software and a model of its underlying hardware architecture. The system model can be simulated and analyzed for validation of both functional and extra-functional properties. The tool chain uses DOL (Distributed Operation Layer [1]) as the frontend for specifying the application software and hardware architecture, and BIP (Behavior Interaction Priority [2]) as the modeling and analysis framework. It is illustrated through the construction of system models of MJPEG and MPEG2 decoder applications running on MPARM, a multicore architecture.