System Modeling and Transformational Design Refinement in ForSyDe

Abstract

Abstract-The scope of the Formal System Design (ForSyDe) methodology is high-level modeling and refinement of systems-on-a-chip and embedded systems. Starting with a formal specification model, that captures the functionality of the system at a high abstraction level, it provides formal design-transformation methods for a transparent refinement process of the system model into an implementation model that is optimized for synthesis. The main contribution of this paper is the ForSyDe modeling technique and the formal treatment of transformational design refinement. We introduce process constructors, that cleanly separate the computation part of a process from the synchronization and communication part. We develop the characteristic function for each process type and use it to define semantic preserving and design decision transformations. These transformations are characterized by name, the format of the original process network, the transformed process network, and a design implication. The implication expresses the relation between original and transformed process network by means of the characteristic function. The objective of the refinement process is a model that can be implemented cost efficiently. To this end, process constructors and processes have a hardware and software interpretation which shall facilitate accurate performance and cost estimations. In a study of a digital equalizer example, we illustrate the modeling and refinement process and focus in particular on refinement of the clock domain, communication refinement, and resource sharing.Index Terms-Formal methods, hardware/software codesign, modeling, system-on-a-chip (SoC).

Advanced Information Systems Engineering Workshops

“…These difficulties are related to a diversity of issues, such as rules for artifact refinement, development metrics, requirements traceability, optimizing of different system aspects, etc. ForSyDe [23] is an example of a design methodology that takes this into account, but actual tool support is not easy to come by. In addition there is one broader question that is not peculiar to our reference model, but which is critical to its use (as discussed in section 3):…”

Domain Globalization: Using Languages to Support Technical and Social Coordination

“…A second kind of approach makes explicit the notion of a Model of Computation (MoC) [18,26,42]. In these approaches, a MoC specifies the causalities, timing and synchronization aspects of a language.…”

System-level co-simulation of integrated avionics using polychrony

“…It has been widely studied in the Ptolemy project [12], MoBIES project [9], SML-Sys modeling frameworks [17], ForSyDe modeling frameworks [19], etc. In these projects, certain common formalisms or agent-based methods are proposed to model or express heterogeneous components, which generally rely on different models of computation.…”