Software IP In Embedded Systems

Abstract

IP-based hardware design became an important topic during the past years. There is an even older tradition of reuse of software components. In this contribution we try to address some key problems of software reuse. First of all, in a bottom-up approach we study some underlying communication techniques used to couple different software components. As the most general solution of this problem is CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture) from our point of view, this technique is discussed briefly. From the bottom we move directly to the top. The most flexible way of handling reusable software IP is to deal with their abstract model. Following this approach, modules can be embedded to various target environments using standard synthesis methods. The problem of protecting property in this approach is not discussed in this chapter. We concentrate on how to combine modules that have been modelled in various languages. At least when using a language coupling approach strict support to define bridging semantics has to be provided. A very useful means for this purpose is given by the ASM (Abstract State Machine) method, which is shortly introduced in the chapter. When software IP has to be used this IP resides on various databases in most cases. We discuss, how design workflows can be defined that allow to access such remote IPs. The exchange format XML plays an important role in this context. Finally we discuss an application example: the application-specific synthesis of real-time operating systems (RTOS) and real-time communication systems (RCOS) from a library of reusable and highly generic software modules.