A Unified Programming Model for Time- and Data-Driven Embedded Applications

Modern embedded systems encompass a fast increasing range of applications, spanning from automotive to multimedia, and industrial automation. To tackle the increasing design complexity, the model-based design paradigm promotes the use of Models of Computation (MoCs) to capture the essential application properties. Existing MoCs are split between the event/time-triggered paradigm and the data-driven paradigm. However, time and data are two inter-related dimensions that are essential for defining the correct application behavior. In this paper we advocate a unified MoC that integrates the notions of time and data while accounting for imperfect clocks. We present the formal properties of our model and show how the Synchronous Data Flow (SDF) MoC can be used to analyze the time performance guarantees.