ModES: Embedded Systems Design Methodology and Tools based on MDE

MDE-based approaches have been proposed as a solution to cope with the inefficiency of current design methods. In this context, our work defines meta-models for application, capturing functionality by means of processes communicating by ports and channels; platform, indicating available hardware/software resources; mapping from application into platform; and implementation, oriented to code generation and hardware synthesis. Differently from other approaches, our mapping meta-model does not specify only the allocation of application processes into fixed hardware components. Instead, it delimits a design space, determining all possible associations between processes and platform components. Transformations between meta-models implement the mapping, allowing the evaluation of possible implementations during a design space exploration process. This exploration is based on accurate estimates of the effects of each transformation, without requiring costly hardware synthesis and code generation steps. These are performed only for the final implementation, after all design decisions have been taken. We implemented our approach using the Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF) features, where our meta-models are captured by Ecore models and the transformation engine uses the ADDi-QVT plug-in. The application on a real case study validates the approach.