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Representation of synchronous, asynchronous, and polychronous components by clocked guarded actions

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Abstract

For the design of embedded systems, many languages are in use, which are based on different models of computation such as event-, data-, and clock-driven paradigms as well as paradigms without a clear notion of time. Systems composed of such heterogeneous components are hard to analyze so that mainly co-simulation by coupling different simulators has been considered so-far. In this article, we propose clocked guarded actions as a unique intermediate representation that can be used as a common basis for simulation, analysis, and synthesis. We show how synchronous, (untimed) asynchronous, and polychronous languages can be translated to clocked guarded actions to demonstrate that our intermediate representation is powerful enough to capture rather different models of computation. Having a unique and composable intermediate representation of these components at hand allows one a simple composition of these components. Moreover, we show how clocked guarded actions can be used for verification by symbolic model checking and simulation by SystemC.

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Notes

  1. http://www.averest.org.

  2. This is somehow similar as reading the value ?x of Signal x in Esterel [7], or implicitly using the cell operator in Signal [27].

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, University of Kaiserslautern, 67653, Kaiserslautern, Germany

    Jens Brandt, Mike Gemünde & Klaus Schneider

  2. Electrical and Computer Engineering, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA

    Sandeep K. Shukla

  3. INRIA, Unité de Recherche Rennes-Bretagne-Atlantique, Rennes, France

    Jean-Pierre Talpin

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  1. Jens Brandt
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  2. Mike Gemünde
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  3. Klaus Schneider
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  4. Sandeep K. Shukla
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  5. Jean-Pierre Talpin
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Correspondence to Jens Brandt.

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Submitted to special issue on languages, models and model based design for embedded systems.

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Brandt, J., Gemünde, M., Schneider, K. et al. Representation of synchronous, asynchronous, and polychronous components by clocked guarded actions. Des Autom Embed Syst 18, 63–97 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10617-012-9087-9

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