Towards a kernel language for heterogenous computing

What is characteristic of modern embedded systems like mobile phones, multimedia terminals, etc. is that their design requires several different description techniques: The radio-frequency part of a mobile phone is designed using analog techniques, the signal processing part can be described using synchronous data-flow, while the protocol stack uses an extended finite state machine based description model. This heterogeneity poses a challenge to embedded system design methodologies, and has resulted in a search for a System Level Design Language (SLDL) for describing both software and hardware. We believe that to obtain a good SLDL one needs to first understand what the combination of models of computation means. To this end we are developing a kernel language in which it is possible to use different models of computation. The main contributions of this work are: (1) a common set of concepts that form the basis of the kernel language, (2) a formally defined operational semantics, which also makes it possible to verify designs using e.g. model-checking, (3) the explicit use of atomicity and, (4) the introduction of the notion of execution policy