Article

Dealing with Hardware in Embedded Software: A General Framework Based on the Devil Language

Authors:

Fabrice Mérillion,

Gilles MullerAuthors Info & Claims

LCTES '01: Proceedings of the ACM SIGPLAN workshop on Languages, compilers and tools for embedded systems

Pages 121 - 127

https://doi.org/10.1145/384197.384214

Published: 01 August 2001 Publication History

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Abstract

Writing code that talks to hardware is a crucial part of any embedded project. Both productivity and quality are needed, but some flaws in the traditional development process make these requirements difficult to meet.

We have recently introduced a new approach of dealing with hardware, based on the Devil language. Devil allows to write a high-level, formal definition of the programming interface of a peripheral circuit. A compiler automatically checks the consistency of a Devil specification, from which it generates the low-level, hardware-operating code.

In our original framework, the generated code is dependent of the host architecture (CPU, buses, and bridges). Consequently, any variation in the hardware environment requires a specific tuning of the compiler. Considering the variability of embedded architectures, this is a serious drawback. In addition, this prevents from mixing different buses in the same circuit interface.

In this paper, we remove those limitations by improving our framework in two ways. (i) We propose a better isolation between the Devil compiler and the host architecture. (ii) We introduce Trident, a language extension aimed at mapping one or several buses to each peripheral circuit.

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Cited By

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Ball Tde Halleux PDevine JHodges SMoskal M(2024)Jacdac: Service-Based Prototyping of Embedded SystemsProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/36564058:PLDI(692-715)Online publication date: 20-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3656405
Lin KHuang SChen S(2007)Optimal allocation of I/O device parameters in hardware and software codesign methodologyProceedings of the 2007 international conference on Embedded and ubiquitous computing10.5555/1780745.1780804(541-552)Online publication date: 17-Dec-2007
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/1780745.1780804
Lin KHuang SChen S(2007)Optimal Allocation of I/O Device Parameters in Hardware and Software Codesign MethodologyEmbedded and Ubiquitous Computing10.1007/978-3-540-77092-3_47(541-552)Online publication date: 2007
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-77092-3_47
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Index Terms

Dealing with Hardware in Embedded Software: A General Framework Based on the Devil Language
1. Hardware
  1. Communication hardware, interfaces and storage
2. Software and its engineering
  1. Software notations and tools
    1. General programming languages

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Published In

LCTES '01: Proceedings of the ACM SIGPLAN workshop on Languages, compilers and tools for embedded systems

August 2001

250 pages

ISBN:1581134258

DOI:10.1145/384197

Chairmen:
Seongsoo Hong
Snow Bird, UT
,
Santosh Pande
Snow Bird, UT

ACM SIGPLAN Notices Volume 36, Issue 8
Aug. 2001
245 pages
ISSN:0362-1340
EISSN:1558-1160
DOI:10.1145/384196
Chairman:
Ron K. Cytron
Washington Univ., St. Louis, MO
,
Editor:
Cindy Norris
Appalachian State Univ., Boone, NC
Issue’s Table of Contents

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 01 August 2001

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LCTES01

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SIGPLAN

LCTES01: Workshop on Languages, Compilers and Tools for Embedded Systems 2001 ( co-located with PLDI 2001 )

Utah, Snow Bird, USA

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Overall Acceptance Rate 116 of 438 submissions, 26%

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Ball Tde Halleux PDevine JHodges SMoskal M(2024)Jacdac: Service-Based Prototyping of Embedded SystemsProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/36564058:PLDI(692-715)Online publication date: 20-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3656405
Lin KHuang SChen S(2007)Optimal allocation of I/O device parameters in hardware and software codesign methodologyProceedings of the 2007 international conference on Embedded and ubiquitous computing10.5555/1780745.1780804(541-552)Online publication date: 17-Dec-2007
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/1780745.1780804
Lin KHuang SChen S(2007)Optimal Allocation of I/O Device Parameters in Hardware and Software Codesign MethodologyEmbedded and Ubiquitous Computing10.1007/978-3-540-77092-3_47(541-552)Online publication date: 2007
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-77092-3_47
Lin KHuang SFang SGielen G(2006)Cooptimization of interface hardware and software for I/O controllersProceedings of the conference on Design, automation and test in Europe: Proceedings10.5555/1131481.1131685(724-725)Online publication date: 6-Mar-2006
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/1131481.1131685
Lin KHuang SChen SLach JQu GIsmail Y(2005)A hardware/software codesign approach for programmable IO devicesProceedings of the 15th ACM Great Lakes symposium on VLSI10.1145/1057661.1057739(323-327)Online publication date: 17-Apr-2005
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1057661.1057739

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Dealing with Hardware in Embedded Software: A General Framework Based on the Devil Language

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