Hierarchical interfaces for hardware software systems

Competent design of hierarchical interfaces for hardware/software systems needs the convergence of three concurrent research directions: the study of hierarchy types, the intelligent communication between different domains, the formalization of verification/test. We aim to extend the theory of hierarchy types, in order to integrate communication properties as well as correctness and testability, to suit the behavioral specification of today’s complex system design. The high level approach of these problems permits the intervention of an intelligent agent for adapting techniques, models or methods to the particular design: a designer, assisted by man-machine dialog interface, or an artificial intelligence system. Behavioral design-for-testability offers a good startup. Testability measures the difficulty of test; it is used in this paper to emphasize the high-level strategy. Design-for-testability techniques (full and partial scan, test point insertion or builtin self-test) increase the fault coverage and reduce the test generation time; as they aim to modify the system's specification to improve testability, performing them at higher levels of the design hierarchy reduces the complexity of their generation and application. An intelligent use of the acquired knowledge on design for communication, verification and testability is enabled.