An IDF-based trace transformation method for communication refinement

In the Artemis project according to A.D. Pimentel et al. (2001), design space exploration of embedded systems is provided by modeling application behavior and architectural performance constraints separately. Mapping an application model onto an architecture model is performed using trace-driven co-simulation, where event traces generated by an application model drive the underlying architecture model. The abstract communication events from the application model may, however, not match the architecture-level communication primitives. This paper presents a trace transformation method, which is based on integer-controlled data-flow models, to perform communication refinement of application-level events. We discuss the proposed method in the context of our prototype modeling and simulation environment. Moreover, using several examples and a case study, we demonstrate that our method allows for efficient exploration of different communication behaviors at architecture level without affecting the application model.