Embedded systems development: quest for productivity and reliability

It is widely agreed that the state of art in methodologies, techniques and tools for embedded systems development is many years behind their desktop counterparts. The job of the embedded software developer is further complicated by the increasing tendency of system designers to shift functionality and complexity away from hardware and into software. As part of an ongoing research at Philips Semiconductors, we have been investigating solutions to the two main problems of productivity and reliability in embedded software development. This paper describes our research effort in this investigation. Specifically, the paper first describes the requirements on embedded systems and their development challenges. It then provides a literature survey of some techniques that address the issues of productivity and reliability. With this background the paper proposes a model driven architectural approach to embedded software development.