""SoD: An Electronic Design Automation Approach to Embedded Networked Software""
This project adapts design approaches from the Electronic Design Automation (EDA) domain to improve the reliability and flexibility of software-intensive systems. In particular, the project develops methodologies, languages, and tools for designing embedded networked (EN) systems software. This project (based in UCLA with a sub-award to USC) is motivated by the EDA top-down design methodologies employed for hardware; the project develops languages and tools that adapt the EDA approach to the design and implementation of software systems. EN systems (which consist of a distributed collection of computing resources embedded in the physical world) are becoming increasingly important in both scientific and social applications (for example, earthquake prediction, contaminant tracking in ground water, soil erosion detection, traffic monitoring, etc.). The EDA design methodology is a logical foundation for designing software intensive systems because it articulates a design flow that contains a number of stages, which successively lower a high-level design until a fully specified hardware system is produced. Developers of EN systems need to describe the global behavior of their designs independent of the nonfunctional constraints, to make important domain knowledge and constraints from the physical world explicit, and to incorporate these properties into the development process in a staged manner. As EN systems move into the mainstream and software engineers outside of research laboratories take on the challenge of building of such systems, the need for sound software design methodologies and tools grows. The approach pursued with this project can greatly simplify the design of software for this important class of systems and thereby accelerate adoption.
Program Manager: Anita J. La Salle Date: June 6, 2007
