An EU development programme has produced a new EDA system for embedded systems.
Funded by the EU’s 6th Framework Programme, the four-year SPEEDS project is claimed to significantly improve design quality while reducing cycle times and cost.
“The successful conclusion of the SPEEDS project will substantially improve the competitiveness of the European embedded systems industry,” says Gert Döhmen, the project co-ordinator, “SPEEDS provides the basis for the European embedded systems industry to evolve from model-based design of hardware and software systems towards the design and construction of integrated, component-based complete virtual system models.”
SPEEDS achieves this by delivering a multi-layered contract-based design and analysis methodology that formalizes the concept of Assumptions and Promises inherent within contracts.
A new ‘controlled speculative design process’ - formalized in the SPEEDS Process Advisor toolset – facilitates trade-off studies through the evaluation of different architectures, enables right-first-time design and minimizes the risk in adopting concurrent design practices.
Building on SysML, the concept of Heterogeneous Rich Components (HRC), in the form of the tool-independent SPEEDS meta-model, underpins the SPEEDS methodology as the basis for model-driven engineering design.
The SPEEDS meta-model is expressive enough to cover the complete development cycle from high-level specifications to design models as well as address both functional and non-functional design aspects.
The HRC components are characterized by formal contracts allowing the use of various analysis techniques, including the new concept of hosted simulation, for design validation in the earliest design stages. The SPEEDS meta-model has also been constructed to seamlessly extend the capabilities of existing industry-specific SysML-based meta-models such as AUTOSAR and AADL.
Supporting the SPEEDS methodology is the SPEEDS Tool Architecture. The tool-independence of the SPEEDS meta-model enables the easy integration of any commercially available embedded systems design tool as it avoids the need for file exchange. Design tool integration is built on the defacto Eclipse standard using the SPEEDS Bus for which the API has been published.
“The SPEEDS design framework is now a reality,” says Roger Dierks, Manager Exploitation & Dissemination, SPEEDS and Sales Manager of Atego Deutschland. “Its adoption will further, significantly drive improvements in time-to-market and help achieve the speedier deployment of embedded systems designs.”
The SPEEDS methodology is also real-world proven having been successfully implemented in pilot projects by the SPEEDS user partners utilizing SPEEDS-compliant tools from the project’s vendor partners. Over 20 large enterprises are now planning to exploit the methodology and concepts as part of their systems design processes.
“The exploitation of the SPEEDS project results is rapidly gaining momentum through implementation of integrated tool environments,” says Dr. Michael Winokur, Technical Manager of the SPEEDS project and Corporate Director of Engineering and Development at Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI). “This is being achieved through the insertion of the multi-layered contract-based design methodology and its underlying HRC meta-model in the industrial partners' engineering design processes, coupled with the tight support of the tool vendors involved in the project who are keen to commercialize the results by incorporating them in their tool suites.”