Model-based configuration of access protection units for multicore processors in embedded systems

Abstract

Multiprocessor system-on-chip platforms are becoming increasingly common in embedded systems. To facilitate a logical isolation of physically connected on-chip components, internal communication links of such platforms are often equipped with dedicated access protection units. When performed manually, the configuration of these units is both time-consuming and error-prone. Therefore, we present a model-based design methodology that allows designers to describe envisaged communication link transactions as well as the desired information flow policy in a platform-independent manner. After automatically verifying the consistency between specified transactions and the declared policy, the proposed toolchain delegates model instances to an extensible generation framework. This framework translates the envisaged transactions into configuration code for access protection units of particular platforms. We give a formal description of both the model and the verification procedure, describe the platform-specific generation framework, and evaluate the approach by applying it to an example scenario from the field of autonomous driving.