Object-oriented specification and design of embedded hard real-time systems

The approach presented in this paper is a contribution to combine well established methodologies in software engineering, namely object-orientation, with novel co-simulation techniques for real-time HW/SW system simulation, and new synthesis techniques based on the HW-semantics of object-oriented HW-specifications. The result is a consistent object-oriented design process for safety critical hard real-time embedded systems. Its objective is to decrease the design time of such systems by improving the re-usability, enabling concurrent HW/SW co-design and avoiding unnecessary iteration loops to meet timing constraints. The paper presents a motivation for and a survey of the methodology as well as a brief introduction into the different phases of the process, in particular simulation and synthesis. The concepts are illustrated by a consistent example taken from an established system level benchmark.