Timed Petri net approach to performance modelling with the MOON method

MOON is a design method suitable for real-time systems that supports concurrency and asynchronous communication. A MOON design specifies the structure of the software system, the hardware resources and the allocation of software components to hardware resources. Performance evaluation is very important throughout the development of a real-time system. Program resource mapping nets (PRM-Nets) are a timed Petri net formalism used for performance evaluation studies. PRM-Nets are integrated performance models recognising the influence of the software structure, physical resources and mapping between software elements and physical resources on performance. Simulation of PRM-Nets allows estimates of response time, throughput and resource utilisation for a variety of hardware configurations to be investigated. The paper proposes the use of PRM-Nets for performance evaluation studies during a MOON design. The transformation of MOON activities and IDAs to PRM-Net performance models is outlined, and the modelling of hardware resources is considered