Time Wizard: a design and assessment tool for real-time applications

Abstract

Time Wizard, the tool we present, is aimed at the design and assessment of applications for real-time applications. It permits the assessment of the system not only at the inter-task level but at the intra-task level as well. It helps the designer to fine tune the task implementation, providing tight bounds for worst case analysis, and helping to decide among implementation alternatives. At the specification level, Time Wizard's extensions to Petri nets provide better modularisation of the design while enforcing a methodology for producing consistent real-time designs. Time Wizard is part of a bigger system aimed at hardware-software codesign but, being self-contained, it may be used as a separate tool for real-time system specification.