42, A Component-Based Approach to Virtual Prototyping of Heterogeneous Embedded Systems. (42, Une Approche à Composants pour le Prototypage Virtuel des Systèmes Embarqués Hétérogènes)

The work presented in this thesis deals with virtual prototyping of heterogeneous embedded systems. The complexity of these systems make it difficult to find an optimal solution. Hence, engineers usually make simulations that require virtual prototyping of the system. Virtual prototyping of an embedded system aims at providing an executable model of it, in order to study its functional as well as its non-functional aspects. Our contribution is the definition of a new component-based approach for the virtual prototyping of embedded systems, called 42. 42 is not a new language for the design of embedded systems, it is a tool for describing components and assemblies for embedded systems at the system-level. Virtual prototyping of embedded systems must take into account their heterogeneous aspect. Following Ptolemy, several approaches propose a catalog of MoCCs (Models of Computation and Communication) and a framework for hierarchically combining them in order to model heterogeneity. As in Ptolemy, 42 allows to organize components and MoCCs in hierarchy. However, the MoCCs in 42 are described by means of programs manipulating a small set of basic primitives to activate components and to manage their communication. A component-based approach like 42 requires a formalism for specifying components. 42 proposes several means for specifying components. We will present these means an give particular interest to 42 control contracts. 42 is designed independently from any language or formalism and may be used jointly with the existing approaches. We provide a proof of concept to demonstrate the interest of using 42 and its control contracts with the existing approaches.