A Compositional Approach to Embedded System Design

An important observable trend in embedded system design is the growing system complexity. Besides the sheer increase of functionality, the growing complexity has another dimension which is the resulting heterogeneity with respect to the different functions and components of an embedded system. This means that functions from different application domains are tightly coupled in a single embedded system. It is established industry practice that specialized specification languages and design environments are used in each application domain. The resulting heterogeneity of the specification is increased even further by reused components (legacy code, IP). Since there is little hope that a single suitable language will replace this heterogeneous set of languages, multi-language design is becoming increasingly important for complex embedded systems. The key problems in the context of multi-language design are the safe integration of the differently specified subsystems and the optimized implementation of the whole system. Both require the reliable validation of the system function as well as of the non-functional system properties. Current cosimulation-based approaches are well suited for functional validation and debugging. However, these approaches are less powerful for the validation of non-functional system properties. In this dissertation, a novel compositional approach to embedded system design is presented which augments existing cosimulation-based design flows with formal analysis capabilities regarding non-functional system properties such as timing or power consumption. Starting from a truly multi-language specification, the system is transformed into an abstract internal design representation which serves as basis for system-wide analysis and optimization.