Objectif
European industry is today in the leading edge world-wide in large markets like telecom, automotive or aerospace. In order to preserve this leading position, European industry needs to improve its know-how in design of complex hybrid systems. Such systems include complex software typically running on distributed hardware made from programmable processors, dedicated co-processors or ASICs in a mixed discrete and continuous environment. Unfortunately, Europe is lagging behind in some areas of embedded system design, due to e.g. US projects like RASSP, a 150M$ DARPA project over 4 years devoted to rapid system codesign and prototyping. The main goal of the COMITY project is to improve and promote an engineering methodology with an associated toolset for the entire design cycle of complex embedded systems. COMITY will provide system designers and software and hardware designers with modelling techniques at multiple levels of abstraction, and by using a common framework based on virtual prototyping to explore architectural solutions and trade-offs before software or hardware begin fabricated. The major expected impacts are a drastic reduction of the time-to-market and developments costs, with a better mastery of requirements changes and technological evolution.
The project results will consist in a complete solution for system prototyping and hardware-software engineering, applicable from early stage in the development process. In order to preserve the different industrial cultures for formalising complex embedded systems, the COMITY methodology will combine various modelling notations and tools to:
- define architectures of flexible embedded systems including both hardware and software, using different analysis and design notations (SDL, StateCharts, MatrixX and Lustre) depending on the industrial context;
- validate executable system specifications;
- allow a safe and easy integration of sub-systems designed "separately", by maximising the reuse of existing complex elements;
- deliver complete behavioural models of software and hardware components, in VHDL or C, which can be generated on ad-hoc frameworks;
- deliver processor- and process- specific targeting of software and hardware models;
- support maintenance and re-design strategies incorporating late changes in the specification, with reduced re-design costs and control over existing design.
The toolset will be made of both mature and industry-proven technologies, and advanced solutions resulting from associated R&D institutes. It will be customised and validated by industrial experiments for the three following application domains: aerospace, automotive and telecom.
The COMITY results will be exploited through the different partner organisations:
- End-users partners (AEROSPATIALE, BMW, INTRACOM) will integrate this methodology in their current engineering practices;
- Associated R&D partners (TIMA, C-LAB, dit/UPM) will disseminate this methodology through academic courses and the production of technical literature;
- the tool providers (VERILOG and ISI) will incorporate major achievements of the COMITY developments in their offer in order to address in a significant way the CAD market.
Besides aerospace, automotive and telecommunication industries, several other European industries may benefit from the results of this project. For instance, the same methodology for the design of highly modular, flexible and maintainable embedded systems may be applied to the computer industry, image processing and multimedia domains.
Champ scientifique
Appel à propositions
Data not availableRégime de financement
CSC - Cost-sharing contractsCoordinateur
31081 Toulouse
France