System Canvas: a new design environment for embedded DSP and telecommunication systems

We present a new design environment, called System Canvas, targeted at DSP and telecommunication system designs. Our environment uses an easy-to-use block-diagram syntax to specify systems at a very high level of abstraction. The block diagram syntax is based on formal semantics, and uses a number of different models of computation including cyclo-static dataflow, dynamic dataflow, and a discrete-event model. A key feature of our tool is that the user does not need to have an awareness of which model is being used: the models can be freely mixed and matched and a simulation can consist of an arbitrary combination of models. The blocks are written in `C´ or `C++´ and it is straightforward to write custom blocks and incorporate them into custom libraries. Other key features include the ability to control simulations via language-neutral scripts and a powerful optimization engine that enables optimization of the system over arbitrarily specified-parameters, constraints, and cost functions. Fixed-point analysis capability allows any signal or variable in the system to be set to any type of number system before the simulation proceeds are tool is available on the Windows NT platform and incorporates modern and ubiquitous Windows GUI look and feel