CAT: An extensible system-level power Consumption Analysis Toolbox for Model-Driven design

The Model-Driven Engineering development methodology (MDE) is gaining more and more importance in the process of developing complex embedded systems. This is mainly due to the fact that system complexity is constantly growing, thus increasing the need for higher abstraction levels in the design flow. Nowadays, given the importance of environmental concerns, power consumption has become a major consideration. As a result, a Computer Aided Design (CAD) tool based on MDE and taking into account the global system power consumption requirements at the early phases of the design process would greatly help. In this context, we present our new Consumption Analysis Toolbox (CAT). Developed for the ITEA-SPICES project, CAT is meant to be used as an extensible toolbox integrating a set of component-based power estimation tools and models with power consumption composition laws to allow for the analysis of complex systems.