Section: Overall Objectives

Embedded System Design

Modern embedded systems combine complexity and heterogeneity both at the level of applications (with a mix of control-flow modes and multimedia data-flow streaming), and at the level of execution platforms (with increasing parallelism and multicore architectures). Compilation of the application onto the platform then takes the form of an allocation mapping involving spatial distribution as well as temporal scheduling. Formal models and methods may help to establish the correctness and the efficiency of such transformations. Static and dynamic (model-checking) analyses are also used to provide insights regarding prescribed formal semantics.

The main objective of the Aoste team is thus to promote the formal design of embedded systems, with their intrinsic concurrent, distributed and real-time aspects. For this, we develop a model-based approach, where models here have sound and precise operational semantics. For this we build upon previous experience by team members on synchronous reactive formalisms such as Esterel and its graphical SyncCharts version, various GALS or polychronous extensions owing to Concurrency Theory (like Process Networks), and the Algorithm-Architecture Adequation methodology (AAA ) embodied in the SynDEx environment.