An IDF-based trace transformation method for communication refinement

In the Artemis project [13], design space exploration of embedded systems is provided by modeling application behavior and architectural performance constraints separately. Mapping an application model onto an architecture model is performed using trace-driven co-simulation, where event traces generated by an application model drive the underlying architecture model. The abstract communication events from the application model may, however, not match the architecture-level communication primitives. This paper presents a trace transformation method, which is based on integer-controlled data-flow models, to perform communication refinement of application-level events. We discuss the proposed method in the context of our prototype modeling and simulation environment. Moreover, using several examples and a case study, we demonstrate that our method allows for efficient exploration of different communication behaviors at architecture level without affecting the application model.