Unified specification of control and data flow

Many signal processing systems use event driven mechanisms-typically based on finite state machines (FSMs)-to control the operation of computationally intensive (data flow) parts. The state machines in turn are often fueled by external inputs as well as by feedback from the signal processing portions of the system. Packet-based transmission systems are a good example for such a close interaction between data and control flow. For an efficient design flow it is of crucial importance to be able to model and analyze the complete functionality of the system within one single design environment. Therefore, we developed a computational model that integrates the specification of control and data flow by combining the notion of data flow graphs with event driven process activation.