A Model-Driven Approach for modeling Heterogeneous Embedded Systems

Demands of high-performance systems guided the designers to the assessment of heterogeneous embedded systems (HES). Their complexity highlighted the need for methodologies and tools to ease their design. Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) can be crucial to facilitate the design of such a system. Research has demonstrated the usage of MDE to create platform-specific models(PSM). The aim of this work is to support HES design targeting platform-agnostic models. This work is based on a well-defined use case. It comprises a software application, written following the CUDA programming model, executing on a CPU-GPU hardware platform. The use case is analyzed to define the main characteristics of a HES. These concerns are included in a UML profile used to capture all the features of a HES. The profile is built as an extension of MARTE modeling language. Finally, the Alf action language is applied to make the model executable. The results prove the suitability of MARTE and Alf to create executable HES models. Additional research is needed to further investigate the HES domain. Finally, it is necessary to prove the validity of the UML profile targeting different programming models and hardware platforms