Modeling methodology for integrated simulation of embedded systems

Abstract

Developing a single embedded application involves a multitude of different development tools including several different simulators. Most tools use different abstractions, have their own formalisms to represent the system under development, utilize different input and output data formats, and have their own semantics. A unified environment that allows capturing the system in one place and one that drives all necessary simulators and analysis tools from this shared representation needs a common representation technology that must support several different abstractions and formalisms seamlessly. Describing the individual formalisms by metamodels and carefully composing them is the underlying technology behind MILAN, a Model-based Integrated Simulation Framework. MILAN is an extensible framework that supports multigranular simulation of embedded systems by seamlessly integrating existing simulators into a unified environment. Formal metamodels and explicit constraints define the domain-specific modeling language developed for MILAN that combines hierarchical, heterogeneous, parametric dataflow representation with strong data typing. Multiple modeling aspects separate orthogonal concepts. The language also allows the representation of the design space of the application, not just a point solution. Nonfunctional requirements are captured as formal, application-specific constraints. MILAN has integrated tool support for design-space exploration and pruning. The models are used to automatically configure the integrated functional simulators, high-level performance and power estimators, cycle-accurate performance simulators, and power-aware simulators. Simulation results are used to automatically update the system models. The article focuses on the modeling methodology and briefly describes how the integrated models are utilized in the framework.

Software development for a novel WSN platform

“…Data types in Gratis++ are modeled similarly to the MILAN system [8]. It allows the specification of both simple and composite types.…”

Measurement-Driven Simulation of Complex Engineering Systems

“…Yet, we were one of the first to use the module description language of Simulink as interface to Globus or Condor. Actor-oriented programs like Ptolemy [17] and MILAN [58] use the same dataflow model as Simulink, but use their own language and had originally no interface to a cluster or grid. The Ptolemy environment not only works in the dataflow domain, but also in many others, as for instance continuous time and discrete events [17].…”

“…This can be in the form of simulation of individual subsystems in isolation as well as replacing detailed behavior with computational more efficient high level behavior, as demonstrated in chapter 6 and for instance also in the Milan project [58]. Yet, abstraction into a hierarchy of modules is for most engineering problems not enough.…”

A model-based extensible framework for efficient application design using FPGA

“…The designer uses the tools integrated in the framework to estimate performance, analyze the effect of parameter variation on performance, and identify optimization opportunities. The framework supports application modeling as a hierarchical data flow graph [Ledeczi et al 2003] (explained in Section 3.2). Such representations allow us to define the application design problem as a mapping (task mapped to a device operating at a particular configuration) problem that can be solved in an efficient manner using, for example, dynamic programming or heuristics.…”