Design: How are Components Described and How are They Modeled?
Today, most “hardware” components are described using a “C model”
- Compiled and executed using C development environment
- Usually an “untimed” model
- Central issues: handling concurrency, special data types, language subsets, language extensions via packages
In certain application-specific areas, other approaches are more common (e.g. SPW, Cosap, Matlab)
- Usually embodies a particular model of sequence/time and specifies a particular path to implementation
- New “general-purpose” approaches under development and research
- CoWare, Felix, Polis, Ptolemy-2, JavaTime, …
Central Issue: Relationship of Description/Specification to final implementation