Flow-Based Specification of Time Design Requirements

Abstract

Abstract-This paper focuses on design requirements in realtime systems where information is processed to produce a response within a specified time. Nowadays, computer control applications embedded in chips have grown in significance in many aspects of human life. These systems need a high level of reliability to gain the trust of users. Ensuring correctness in the early stages of the design process is especially a major challenge in these systems. Faulty requirements lead to errors in the final product that have to be fixed later, often at a high cost. A crucial step in this process is modeling the intended system. This paper explores the potential of flow-based modeling in expressing design requirements in real-time systems that include time constraints and synchronization. The main emphasized problem is how to represent time. The objective is to assist real-time system requirement engineers, in an early state of the development, to express the timing behavior of the developed system. Several known examples are modeled and the results point to the viability of the flow-based representation in comparison with such time specifications as state-based and linebased modeling.

Computer Science Approach to Philosophy: Schematizating Whitehead’s Processes

“…In the next section, the paper begins by reviewing the modeling tool, called the Flowthing Model (FM) [14][15][16], to be used in interpreting Whitehead's notions through diagrammatic representations. Generally speaking, the word model, as used here, is a computer science term that refers to an abstract representation developed as a means of communication among stakeholders when building a complex system.…”

“…Note that for simplicity sake's, the person flow machine is not included in a box. Accordingly, the person goes to his/her car (7-10) to be transported (11) to his/her office (12)(13)(14)(15) to open Excel.…”

Computer Science Approach to Information-Like Artifacts as Exemplified by Memes

“…The Flowthing Model (FM) [17][18][19][20][21][22] represents some segment of reality as a web of interrelated flows that cross boundaries of intersecting and nested spheres. In the context of memes, every host is represented by a sphere with a hierarchical structure.…”