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Send til en ven   Udskriv25/10 2011 kl. 16:37
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Succesfuldt nordisk samarbejde om system-level værktøjer

I det fællesnordiske project, SYSMODEL, er der blevet udviklet open source system-level værktøjer og metodologier, som nu tages i brug af projektparterne i kommercielle projekter (in english).

In order to support the competitiveness of small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) six SMEs from the Nordic countries have teamed up with three recognized R&D providers in the ARTEMIS SYSMODEL project to develop system level modeling tools that can increase their design productivity.

Industry is facing a crisis in the design of complex hardware/software systems. Due to the increasing complexity, the gap between the generation of a product idea and the realization of a working system is expanding rapidly. To manage complexity and to shorten design cycles, industry is forced to look at system level languages towards specification and design.


The SYSMODEL project provides the SMEs with system level modeling tools for the design and implementation of time and power critical, heterogeneous systems. The tools allow the SMEs to build cost‐efficient ambient intelligence systems with optimal performance, high confidence, reduced time to market and faster deployment.

The focus is on the development of modeling concepts, methods and tools that master system’s complexity by allowing cost‐efficient mapping of applications and product variants onto an embedded platform; while respecting constraints in terms of resources (time, energy, memory, etc.), safety, security and quality of service.

The general availability of the modeling methodologies is facilitated by the Open Source approach, where all tools are made available free of charge. In order to disseminate the modeling methodologies and tools to a wider group of SMEs the project has established a wiki based entry to tools, models, libraries and tutorials guiding new users through modelling exercises.

SYSMODEL is based on the formal ForSyDe framework developed by Royal Institute of Technology. In SYSMODEL it has been successfully ported to SystemC to allow a smooth integration with the System Functionality Framework (SFF) and the Platform Architecture Framework (PAF). 

SystemC has been selected by the SYSMODEL consortium as the main modeling language for all models ofcomputation. The SFF allows specification of executable models and PAF is mainly a library of components. In SYSMODEL, the concepts of refinement by replacement approach is introduced, which allows a stepwise refinement of an abstract SFF system model by replacing individual SFF models by executable platform models. These mixed SFF/PAF models can then be co‐simulated inside the SYSMODEL design framework.

SYSMODEL has provided four SystemC based Models of Computation (MoC): the Untimed MoC, the Discrete time MoC, the Continuous time MoC and the the Synchronuous MoC. These MoCs have been carefully selected in order to be able to model the application domains of the project’s six SYSMODEL News SMEs.

Other languages (C, VHDL, Matlab/Simulink) are integrated into the system model using SystemC wrappers. Tutorials help the SMEs to get started with the MoC libraries.
Commercial use

At the moment two of the project’s SMEs have taken the tools and methodologies into commercial use:
Novelda AS is an innovative Norwegian fabless semiconductor company specializing innanoscale wireless low‐power technology for ultra high resolution impulse radars. The Novelda Impulse Radar is a complete CMOS radar transceiver integrated on a single chip. Recently Frost & Sullivan awarded Novelda the prestigious ‘2011 European Sensors New Product Innovation Award’. Novelda has applied the SYSMODEL tools to model parts of the next generation UWB radio system.

- The modelling enables us to evaluate potential system architectures and tweak important parameters while the design is still at a conceptual level, explains Novelda’s CEO, Dag T. Wisland.
- This development step would have taken much longer time using existing design methods and even more important, the modelling reduces the risk of costly respins. It is safe to say that the methodologies provided by SYSMODEL significantly improve Novelda’s productivity.

Catena Wireless Electronics AB is a Swedish SME providing Systems on Chip developments including architectural choices, circuit design, embedded software development and contract research. Mats Carlsson, Operations Manager at Catena Wireless Electronics, explains that at the start of a typical project we assist customers in translating their system requirements into a suitable IC architecture with agreed target specifications.

- After that we take care of the design, layout and validation of the integrated circuit. In this process it is crucial that we already at the system level can describe and model the performance of the final product. We have applied the SYSMODEL methodologies into one of our developments, where the complexity of integrating hardware and software requires a new tools approach.

- In this development, we successfully applied the Synchronous MoC and the Continuous Time MoC to verify the systems performance with respect to the requirements. The system level modelling possibility which has resulted out of the SYSMODEL project offers new ways to model hardware and software together, which is crucial for reducing time to market and increasing the chance of first time right designs.

SYSMODEL now encourages other European SMEs to try the modelling libraries. The R&D staff will support such experiments.
It is possible to get started at www.sysmodel.eu where links are provided to the wiki containing tools, libraries and tutorials.
More project information:
SYSMODEL:www.sysmodel.eu or info@sysmodel.eu
ARTEMIS:https://www.artemisia‐association.org/ and http://www.artemis‐ju.eu/

Project partners is:
Technoconsult ApS
AuditData A/S
Technical University of Denmark
Kungl. Tekniska Högskolan
Catena Wireless Electronics AB
Nito Telecom AB
Novelda AS
Tampere University of Technology
DA‐Design Oy
Finnelpro Oy (now DA‐Design Oy)

Together with ARTEMIS and the national funding authorities in the Nordic countries (Tekes‐FI, Vinnova‐SE, The Research Council of Norway‐NO and the Danish Agency for Science Technology and Innovation‐DK) the partners are investing nearly € 5.4 million in developing the modeling tools.

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