A Graphical Modelling Editor for STARSoC Design Flow Tool Based on Model Driven Engineering Approach

Background: Due to the increasing complexity of embedded systems, system designers use higher levels of abstraction in order to model and analyse system performances. STARSoC (Synthesis Tool for Adaptive and Reconfigurable System-on-Chip) is a tool for hardware/software co-design and the synthesis of System-on-Chip (SoC) starting from a high level model using the StreamsC textual language. The process behaviour is described in the C syntax language, whereas the architecture is defined with a small set of annotation directives. Therefore, these specifications bring together a large number of details which increase their complexity. However, graphical modelling is better suited for visualizing system architecture. Objectives: In this paper, the authors propose a graphical modelling editor for STARSoC design tool which allows models to be constructed quickly and legibly. Its intent is to assist designers in building their models in terms of the UML Component-like Diagram, and in the automatic translation of the drawn model into StreamsC specification. Methods: To achieve this goal, the Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) approach and well-known frameworks and tools on the Eclipse platform were employed. Conclusion: Our results indicate that the use of the Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) approach reduces the complexity of embedded system design, and it is sufficiently flexible to incorporate new design needs.