IP-XACT for smart systems design: extensions for the integration of functional and extra-functional models

Abstract

Smart systems are miniaturized devices integrating computation, communication, sensing and actuation. As such, their design can not focus solely on functional behavior, but it must rather take into account different extra-functional concerns, such as power consumption or reliability. Any smart system can thus be modeled through a number of views, each focusing on a specific concern. Such views may exchange information, and they must thus be simulated simultaneously to reproduce mutual influence of the corresponding concerns. This paper shows how the IP-XACT standard, with some necessary extensions, can effectively support this simultaneous simulation. The extended IP-XACT descriptions allow to model extra-functional properties with a homogeneous format, defined by analysing requirements and characteristic of three main concerns, i.e., power, temperature and reliability. The IP-XACT descriptions are then used to automatically generate a skeleton of the simulation infrastructure in SystemC. The skeleton can be easily populated with models available in the literature, thus reaching simultaneous simulation of multiple concerns.

Towards Multidimensional Verification: Where Functional Meets Non-Functional

“…[35] and [36] focus on the RAS (reliability, availability and serviceability) group of extrafunctional aspects outlined by IBM for complex processor designs where embedded error protection mechanisms and designs intrinsic immunity (due to various masking) to errors is evaluated by fault injection. [43] and [44] propose extensions to system descriptions in the IP-EXACT format to enable multi-layer representation and simulation of several mutually influencing extrafunctional aspects of smart system designs such as lifetime reliability (aging), power and temperature. A complex approach to verification of multiple reliability concerns (soft errors, BTI, etc.)…”

“…[17] available for functional verification. [42], [43], [44], [50], [52], [53], are aimed at methodologies suitable for specific applications (such as cyber-physical system [50]) that assume verification of extra-functional aspects such as power, timing, thermal at the system level.…”

A unifying flow to ease smart systems integration

“…• IP-XACT permits to specify how the subcomponents of the system must interact in order to implement the functionality. A recent extension to extra-functional information permits to analyze and develop the functional behavior of the system keeping an eye on extra-functional properties of the system, that may be crucial when dealing with smart systems design [21]. • Formal specifications and extra-functional parameters are currently supported in terms of mathematical basedformalisms, e.g.…”