Towards a Model-based Toolchain for the High-Confidence Design of Embedded Systems

While design automation for hardware systems is quite advanced, this is not the case for practical embedded systems. The current state-of-the-art is to use a software modeling environment and integrated development environment for code development and debugging, but these rarely include the sort of automatic synthesis and verification capabilities available in the VLSI domain. This paper introduces concepts, elements, and some early prototypes for an envisioned suite of tools for the development of embedded software that integrates verification steps into the overall process.