An approach to efficient software/hardware integration in embedded computer systems

Although the integration process in the development of embedded computer systems is usually the most troublesome and resource consuming, no known software design methodology takes into account this phase of the software development cycle. On the contrary, effort is being made in the preliminary system analysis and design phases to ensure that the software analysis and top-level design are not tailored to a particular early hardware solution but rather reflect the overall system requirements. While such a strategy may lead to a seemingly sound, structured software design, it also hides the system problems. These will surface only in the integration phase, and since by then the software is already quite complex, dealing with them is both costly and time consuming. The authors propose a way of keeping step with good software engineering practices while high-lighting potential integration problems at an early stage of the project. This is achieved by replacing the top-down, stepwise partitioning of the system functions with a layered hierarchy where each layer represents a unique set of system features or the objects. With this approach, all software interacting with the hardware may be grouped within one hierarchy layer and dealt with in parallel with other system aspects