Hardware/software codesign of an avionics protocol interface system

Design of heterogeneous hardware/software systems is not really a new idea, since designers have been used to mixing generic programmable and specific hardware components for algorithms implementation. However, with the growing systems complexity, a computer-aided codesign methodology becomes essential. A codesign methodology relies on an executable system-level specification, independent of implementation, which enables hardware/software architecture exploration and synthesis. This paper presents an application of the avionics domain: the ARINC communication protocol interface system. The codesign approach is based on the POLIS framework, coupled with the Esterel specification language