Selected Papers from SLA++P 07 and 08 Model-Driven High-Level Programming of Embedded Systems

Abstract

Model-based high-level programming of embedded systems has become a reality in the automotive and avionics industries. These industries place high demands on the efficiency and maintainability of the design process as well as on the performance and functional correctness of embedded components. These goals are hard to reconcile in the face of the increasing complexity of embedded applications and target architectures. Research efforts towards meeting these goals have brought about a variety of high-level engineering design languages, tools, and methodologies. Their strength resides in clean behavioral models with strong semantical foundations providing a rigorous way to go from a highlevel description to mathematically certifiable executable code. The most successful representatives of this trend of putting logic and mathematics behind design automation in embedded systems are synchronous languages; they have been receiving increasing attention in industry ever since they emerged in the 80s. Lustre, Esterel, and Signal are now widely and successfully used to program real-time and safety critical applications, from nuclear power plant management layer to Airbus air flight control systems. Their recent successes in the automatic control industry highlight the benefits of formal verification and automatic code generation from high-level models. Model-based programming is making its way in other fields of software engineering too. Strong interest is emerging in component programming for large-scale embedded systems, in the link between simulation tools and compiler tools, in languages for describing the system and its environment, integrated tools for both compilation and simulation of more general models of communication and coordination, and so forth. The impact of such unifying methodologies will depend on the extent to which it will be possible to maintain the high degree of predictability and verifiability of system behavior that is the strength of the classic synchronous world.