Embedded Software for SoC - Grupo de Mecatrônica EESC/USP

Chapter 11
EVALUATION OF APPLYING SPECC TO THE
INTEGRATED DESIGN METHOD OF DEVICE
DRIVER AND DEVICE
Shinya Honda and Hiroaki Takada
Information and Computing Sciences, Toyohashi University of Technology, 1-1 Hibarigaoka,
Tempaku-cho, Toyohashi City, Aichi pref., 441-8580 Japan
Abstract. We are investigating an integrated design method for a device driver and a device in
order to efficiently develop device drivers used in embedded systems. This paper evaluates
whether SpecC, which is proposed as a system level description language, is applicable to integrated
description language for the integrated design method. We use an SIO system to confirm
the feasibility of using SpecC for integrating a device and description device driver. We manually
convert the SpecC description to the device, the device driver and the interface in between and
confirm that the conversion can be automated. We also confirm the feasibility of conversion
when the partition point between the software and the hardware is changed. As a result, we show
that SpecC could apply as a integrated design language of the design method.
Key words: co-design, RTOS, device driver
1. INTRODUCTION
Embedded systems are becoming complicated and largely scaled. In addition
to the increase in development time and costs, the degrading design quality
and system reliability have been a major problem for developers. Since
embedded systems are designed for specific target hardware mechanism, each
system has different hardware configuration and peripheral devices. Therefore,
a device driver that directly control devices needs to be developed for each
system. Development of device drivers occupy a high proportion of software
development in embedded system [1].
Developing a device driver is difficult and takes a long time regardless of
the small code size. This can be mainly attributed to the lack of communication
between hardware designers and software designers. Device manuals
mainly focus on explanations of device registers and they lack explanations
from a software viewpoint regarding control methods that are necessary for
device driver development. The information provided by the device driver
manual is not enough to design a device driver and in most cases, the device
interface is designed without considering the device driver development
situation, so the device driver development gets more difficult.
137
A Jerraya et al. (eds.), Embedded Software for SOC, 137–150, 2003.
© 2003 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.