Mission success: meeting the systems acquisition challenge with electronic systems design automation

Abstract

The ever-increasing complexity of electronic systems and interdependency of hardware and software throughout the system life cycle makes it imperative to develop effective electronic design automation languages, methodologies, and tools. Commercial systems face increasing complexity and performance requirements, while achieving decreasing times to market and maximizing profits despite shrinking product life-cycles. Defense systems face similar issues, but must also support life cycles spanning years or decades, thus requiring redesign support or prevention of parts obsolescence challenges. For cost-effective development of systems in this context, design teams need to exploit the best commercial and defense design practices and adapt them as needed to also support concurrent engineering considerations. This paper explores requirements for the emerging system level design language and the methodological needs for it to support multi-disciplinary design, including hardware software co-design, mechanical and packaging support, concurrent engineering, test, and related issues. By employing these techniques and representations, weapons systems acquisition programs will reduce technical, cost, and schedule risk to help ensure mission success.