A Model-Driven Framework for Hardware-Software Co-design of Dataflow Applications

Hardware-software (HW-SW) co-design allows to meet system-level objectives by exploiting the synergy of hardware and software. Current tools and approaches for HW-SW co-design face difficulties coping with the increasing complexity of modern-day application due to, e.g., concurrency and energy constraints. Therefore, an automated modeling approach is needed which satisfies modularity, extensibility, and interoperability requirements. Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) is a prominent paradigm that, by treating models and model transformations as first-class citizens, helps to fulfill these requirements. This paper presents a state-of-the-art MDE-based framework for HW-SW co-design of dataflow applications, based on synchronous dataflow (SDF) graph formalism. In the framework, we introduce a reusable set of three coherent metamodels for creating HW-SW co-design models concerning SDF graphs, hardware platforms and allocation of SDF tasks to hardware. The framework also contains model transformations that cast these models into priced timed-automata models, the input language of the well-known model checker UPPAAL Cora. We demonstrate how our framework satisfies the requirements of modularity, extensibility, and interoperability in an industrial case study