Efficient distribution of Triggered Synchronous Block Diagrams on asynchronous platforms

Abstract

As the complexity of embedded systems rapidly increases in terms of both scale and functionality, there has been a strong interest in design languages and methodologies that facilitate the use of formal methods. These languages and methodologies are mostly based on a synchronous paradigm that, while satisfies the need for formalization, often results in an inefficient implementation requiring substantial overhead when compared to approaches that do not enforce synchronicity on the execution platform. Therefore, the interest is high for techniques that on one hand, maintain the formal properties of synchronous models, and on the other hand, enable the use of asynchronous and distributed execution platforms with little overhead. In this paper, we propose an approach for efficient distribution of Triggered Synchronous Block Diagrams (SBDs) on asynchronous platforms while preserving the correct semantics. Compared to previous work that utilizes trigger elimination, our approach aims to reduce the unnecessary communication overhead and thus improve the efficiency of the implementation. We consider both general Triggered SBDs where the values of triggers are dynamically computed, as well as Timed SBDs where triggers are statically known and usually specified by (period, initial phase) pairs.