Designing FPGA-based embedded systems with MARTE: A PIM to PSM converter

With the significant increase in complexity of system-on-chip arises the necessity of embedded systems designers to work with more flexible and detailed modeling rules. The MARTE (Modeling and Analysis of Real Time and Embedded Systems) modeling language developed by OMG (Object Management Group) to design embedded systems, supporting real-time constraints, allows specification and integration of models designed on System (Hw/Sw), Hardware(HW) and Software(Sw) levels. This language enables the MDA methodology (Model-Driven Architecture) to be employed for the development of embedded systems in a standard way independently of implementation technology. In this context, this paper presents a converter, called I2S, in which platform-independent models (PIM) are automatically converted to specific models (PSM) of Altera [1] and Xilinx [2] platforms. It also describes how the models are specified and interpreted in MARTE and how the PIM to PSM transformations occur. The PSM models generated by the tool are synthesizable, which allows their application to real-world problems.