A MDE-based optimisation process for Real-Time systems: Optimizing systems at the architecture-level using the real DSL and library of transformation and heuristics

The design and implementation of Real-Time Embedded Systems is now heavily relying on Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) as a central place to define and then analyze or implement a system. MDE toolchains are taking a key role as to gather most of functional and non-functional properties in a central framework, and then exploit this information. Such toolchain is based on both 1) a modeling notation, and 2) companion tools to transform or analyze models. Yet, we note the modeling process is driven by the engineer view of the system to be built. This view may fit a particular vision, e.g. a functional breakdown, but usually overlook another like hardware constraints. Thus, a re-factoring of the model may be required to have a better ?t and optimize resources to actual CPU or memory resources. Such rewriting may be time-consuming to ensure the semantics is preserved. Optimization is a typical step in a compiler. As for typical compilation techniques, we claim that MDE toolchains would benefit from automatic optimization techniques that preserve execution semantics, schedulability or other non-functional constraints. In this paper, we present a first step towards MDE-based system optimisation based on an architectural description. We first define a generic evaluation pipeline to assess model metrics. We then define a library of elementary transformations and show how to apply it to evaluate and then transform models using a Domain-Specific Language. Finally, we illustrate this process on an AADL case study modeling a Generic Avionics Platform