An abstract modeling approach towards system-level design-space exploration

Integration of increasingly complex systems on a chip augments the need of system-level methods for specification and design. In the earliest phases of the design process important design decisions can be taken on the basis of a fast exploration of the design space. This paper describes an abstract modeling approach towards system-level design-space exploration, which is formal and flexible. It uses a uniform system model that contains both functional and architectural information. Disjunct, parameterizable resources represent the real-time behavior of the target architecture. Due to the expressiveness of the modeling language (POOSL), control as well as data oriented behavior can be specified in the functional part of the system model. Well-founded design decisions can be taken as a result of performance estimations that are based on Markov theory.