A design flow based on a domain specific language to concurrent development of device drivers and device controller simulation models

Abstract

Nowadays, embedded Systems must communicate with different peripheral devices. The communication structure is implemented by a combined solution of hardware and software. The device controller is the hardware that implements, in general, complex communication protocols. On the other hand, the device driver provides transparent access to the functionalities of the device and depends on the architecture of the device controller. So, the design of the communication structure demands great effort, considerable development time and is very susceptible to errors. To minimize these issues, this paper presents an approach to the concurrent development of device controller simulation models and of the respective device drivers. Also a domain specific language, called DevC, is proposed to describe device controller features in a high level of abstraction. In this paper a brief introduction to this language is presented. From the specifications described in DevC, controller models and device drivers are synthesized. Both the device controller and the driver are first validated using a hardware virtual platform to reduce simulation time, and then they are validated on real hardware. Some controllers, such as a serial, as well as a text and graphic lcd, have been developed to validate the approach proposed.