Accurate yet fast modeling of real-time communication

• Published in: International Conference on Hardware Software Codesign: Proceedings of the 4th international conference on Hardware/software codesign and system synthesis; 22-25 Oct. 2006 pp. 70 - 75
• Main Authors: Schirner, Gunar, Dömer, Rainer
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: New York, NY, USA ACM 22.10.2006; IEEE; Association for Computing Machinery
• Series: ACM Conferences
• Subjects: Abstracts; Accuracy; Applied sciences; CAN; Communication system control; Computer science; control theory; systems; Computer systems and distributed systems. User interface; Computing methodologies > Modeling and simulation > Model development and analysis; controller area network; Costs; Electronics; Exact sciences and technology; Integrated circuits; Integrated circuits by function (including memories and processors); Predictive models; Read only memory; Real time systems; real-time communication; result oriented modeling; ROM; Semiconductor electronics. Microelectronics. Optoelectronics. Solid state devices; Software; System performance; System-level design; Timing; TLM; transaction level model; system level design; CAN; ROM; TLM; controller area network; transaction level model; real-time communication; result oriented modeling; Performance evaluation; Read only memory(ROM); Circuit design; Codesign; Replacement; Transaction processing; Abstraction; Real time; Modeling; Timed system; Real time system; Local network; Safety-critical software
• ISBN: 9781595933706; 1595933700
• DOI: 10.1145/1176254.1176273

Accurate modeling of communication is a necessary part of system level design for real-time safety-critical applications. For efficient prediction of a system's performance, Transaction Level Modeling (TLM) is often used which increases the simulation speed by orders of magnitude. The speed advantage, however, comes at the cost of low accuracy.In this paper, we use a novel modeling technique, called Result Oriented Modeling (ROM), which yields 100% accuracy in timing, yet approaches the same speed as traditional TLM. ROM also abstracts away internal details of the communication but, in contrast to TLM, fully maintains accurate timing. ROM optimistically predicts the timing and retroactively takes corrective measures, if necessary.In this paper, we compare the ROM technique to TLM at different levels of abstraction, using a Controller Area Network (CAN) bus example. Our results show that ROM yields a simulation speedup close to the traditional TLM, yet exhibits the same timing accuracy as a bus functional model. Thus, for safety-critical real-time applications, ROM is a viable replacement for the inaccurate TLM.