UML-based single-source approach for evaluation and optimization of mixed-critical embedded systems

Mixed-critical systems combine highly-critical tasks with non-critical activities. Among them, there is a trend of sharing the available HW resources for all these activities, as a way of optimizing costs and power consumption. However, the design of such complex systems is a challenge, due to the different requirements and goals of critical and non-critical tasks, and the side effects resulting from their integration. As a consequence, the design of mixed critical systems requires the integration of different design flows and tools, and consideration of the whole system during the development of each specific component. To handle this challenge, this paper presents a single-source proposal where UML models are used as a common input that drives a flow of different design tools in a mixed-critical context. The flow covers performance estimation, static schedulability analysis and code synthesis to guarantee the critical tasks' constraints and to evaluate the remaining times available for the execution of non-real time tasks.