Design methods and tools: the scope of the SRA

The ARTEMIS SRA identifies ‘Design Methods and Tools’ as an important area of research. Design methods and tools are essential for rapid design and prototyping, without which it is unrealistic to attempt development of such complex systems. The objectives for research in this area are: design efficiency, systematic design, productivity and quality. For example, radical design and verification methodologies, including specific approaches for systems modelling and simulation, enabling both software and hardware instantiation from high-level descriptions with automatic co-verification, are required in order to achieve an order of magnitude advance in productivity. We will call the collection of novel tools and design flows to be developed the ‘ARTEMIS Method’.

The research required to establish the ARTEMIS Method will embrace:

The development of specific tools, integrable into the core work-flow, that address key design problems of Embedded Systems.These design tools will address the needs of heterogeneous system structures.
The management of the design process so as to accommodate the growing complexity, and provide product hierarchy, supply chain, and information flow management.
Interoperability between tools and procedures that are included in the ‘ARTEMIS method’.
Open interface standards, to ensure large acceptance of the ARETMIS Method by securing the intellectual property rights of the specific tools developed to support it.
Methods and tools for systematic traceability of component properties and their attributes, including safety and dependability, during development and integration.
Methods and tools for simulation, automatic validation and proving, and verification and validation (V&V).
Methods and tools for developing product lines of embedded systems.

However, it is not enough to develop tools in isolation from each other. They must, in combination, work together in a coherent fashion to support complex design processes so as to achieve multiple - and often conflicting - objectives. This SRA therefore also includes the research required to achieve coherent interoperation and integration between tools and methods, in order to optimise the end-to-end development process.

Physical design of semiconductor is considered out of scope: it is discussed in other initiatives such as the ENIAC European Technology Platform initiative. Particular care has been taken to integrate the ARTEMIS method with tools reference frameworks and methods developed in ENIAC as well as within the two other expert groups of the ARTEMIS Platform dedicated to Reference Design and Architecture and Seamless Connectivity and Middleware. During refinement of this Strategic Research Agenda cognisance has been and will continue to be taken of similar domain-specific methods and tools analyses already undertaken in initiatives such as ITEA, MEDEA+ and in the course of the 6th Framework Programme program and in preparation for the 7th Framework Programme.

Objectives

ARTEMIS research into Design Methods and Tools for Embedded Systems is motivated and guided by the following targets for embedded systems development:

Reduce the cost of system design by 50%
Achieve 50% reduction in development cycles
Manage a complexity increase of 100% with 20% effort reduction
Reduce by 50% the effort and time required for revalidation and re-certification
Achieve cross-industry reusability of Embedded Systems devices
Inter-operability, at a deep semantic level, between tools and procedures that are included in the ‘ARTEMIS method’.

For each of the research priorities that are described in the body of this document, the nature of their contribution to achievement of these objectives is indicated.

Working Groups have indentified research priorities for this domain in this document:

Design methods and tools: the scope of the SRA

The research required to establish the ARTEMIS Method will embrace:

Objectives

Documents