CAREER: Designing Embedded Systems with Domain-Specific Languages

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Designing Embedded Systems with Domain-Specific LanguagesStephen A. EdwardsThis goal of this project is to provide tools to designers of embeddedsystems that will allow them to more quickly create correct systems.It proposes to do this by providing domain-specific languages andcompilers. Such succinct, abstract languages reduce development andtesting time by providing more formal, correct-by-constructionmethodologies and by enabling automatic implementation techniques.The result will enable the development of these systems to proceedbeyond the current ad hoc C-and-assembly approach.The project addresses three issues in the design of many embeddedsystems: real-time software, software for communication, and softwarefor communicating across the hardware/software boundary.These issues are addressed through the following specific investigations:New Compilation Techniques for Synchronous LanguagesSynchronous languages such as Esterel provide very predictablereal-time behavior but are challenging to compile. This projectincludes developing new, more efficient compilation techniques forlarge systems described in the Esterel language and its variants. New Languages and Compilers for Communication ProtocolsNetwork communication is becoming a crucial part of every embeddedsystem, but the growing complexity of the protocols and the need forbandwidth (e.g., for video) makes this software difficult to develop.This project includes the development of a new language fordescribing such protocol software and a compiler for producingefficient implementations.New Languages and Compilers for Device DriversWriting software that communicates directly with hardware is currentlytedious and error-prone, and unfortunately even more important inembedded systems since they tend to have application-specificperipherals. This project aims to simplify this task by creating alanguage and compiler for writing device drivers. The results of this research will enable more diverse languages for communicating across the hardware/software boundary.This project is also addressing the recurring complaint that academiadoes not produce students who understand both hardware and softwarewell enough to be effective embedded systems designers by developingnew courses along these lines. At the undergraduate level, a newembedded systems project course is being developed that will givestudents the opportunity to learn about and use some of these newtechniques. At the graduate level, a more sophisticated course isbeing developed that focuses on languages for describing embeddedsystems and isses with their semantics and implementation. This willgive future designers more tools for developing embedded systems andwill prepare students for research in automating embedded systemdesign.The results of this project are being disseminated in three ways:through conference and journal papers, through the release of alldeveloped software to the public domain, and through the education ofstudents in the use of the languages and compilers developed. Just ascomputer-aided design tools have enabled the rapid, correct design offantastically complex integrated circuits, this work is enabling thequick, correct design of tomorrow's complex embedded systems.