Embedded Software for SoC - Grupo de Mecatrônica EESC/USP

Evaluation of Applying SpecC to the Integrated Design Method 139
2. INTEGRATED DESIGN METHOD
There are works being conducted for efficient development of device drivers
for embedded systems, such as design guidelines for device driver design
and research on generating device drivers automatically [3, 4]. However,
design guidelines only solve the problem partially and in automatic generation,
the description method of the device driver and device specifications is
a problem. Moreover, these approaches only deal with existing device and
since in most cases in embedded systems, a device is designed for each system,
these approaches are ineffective.
As a more effective approach for increasing the efficiency of the device
driver development, we conduct a research on integrated design method that
describes the device and the device driver as a unit and generate implementation
descriptions from the integrated description. By describing the device
and the device driver as a unit, the communication between device designers
and device driver designers can be improved, and the device design in consideration
of the device driver development situation is enhanced. Moreover
if the integrated description is executable, it can be useful to verify the model
at an early development stage.
The design flow of the proposed method is shown in Figure 11-1. 1 The first
describes the device driver and the device using SpecC. This description is
divided into the portion that is implemented in software and the portion that