Embedded Systems must communicate with different peripheral devices. The communication structure is implemented by a combined solution of hardware and software. The device controller is the hardware part that implements, in general, complex communication protocols. On the other hand, device driver provides transparent access to the device functionalities and depends on the device controller architecture. So, the design of communication structure demands great effort, long time and is quite susceptible to errors. To minimize these questions, this paper presents an approach to the concurrent development of device controller simulation models and the respective device drivers. Also a domain specific language, called DevC, is proposed to describe device controller features in a high level of abstraction. A brief introduction to this language is presented. From the specifications described in DevC, controller models and device drivers are synthesized. Both the device controller and the driver are first validated using a hardware virtual platform to reduce simulation time, and then they are validated on real hardware. Some controllers, such as serial, text and graphic lcd, have been developed to validate the proposed approach.
| Last Update: March 02, 2009 |