Natividad Martínez Madrid

A qualification platform for design reuse

The application and development of reusable components (intellectual property, IP) has become a regular part of modern design practices. The IP provider on one side and the IP integrator (user) on the other may be in the same company or separate participants in the microelectronic design market. In both cases, the transfer of IP remains a complex and time-consuming task. The qualification of IP gains a significant relevance for successful application and transfer of IP. This paper proposes an IP qualification methodology for an automated quality check that also incorporates current standards. Through embedding of the new concept into the regular design flow, IP transfer comes closer to an easy mix and match of virtual components. The presented approach has been validated during an industrial case study.

Virtualization of Residential Gateways

The residential gateway (RGW) is a key infrastructure component in home networks. Nowadays, the Open Service Gateway Initiative (OSGi) seems to be the only platform alternative supporting hot-plug of services and an easy way to deploy new ones which are capable to integrate heterogeneous devices into a common platform. But this platform can be managed by only one manager in a secure way, and this is limiting possible business models. The problem can be solved virtualizing the OSGi platform in such way that service providers can manage the RGW, and have full control over the services that they have installed, without conflicting with other service providers. This paper presents a general architecture for the virtualization of OSGi platforms that are running in a RGW.

Virtual Components Design and Reuse

List of figures. List of tables. 1. Virtual components - from research to business J. Haase. 2. Evaluation of technology and the medea design automation roadmap J. Borel, et al. 3. Productivity in VC reuse: linking SOC platforms to abstract systems design methodology G. Martin. 4. Software IP in embedded systems C. Boke, et al. 5. ARDID: a tool and a model for the quality analysis of VHDL based designs Y. Torroja, et al. 6. A VHDL analysis environment for design reuse C. Costi, D.M. Miller. 7. Lambda-block analysis of VHDL for design reuse W. Fornaciari, et al. 8. IP retrieval by solving constraint satisfaction problems M. Koegst, et al. 9. Cryptographic reuse library A. Schubert, et al. 10.A VHDL reuse component model for mixed abstraction level simulation and behavioral synthesis C. Hansen, et al. 11. Virtual component interfaces M.M. Kamal Hashmi. 12. A method for interface customization of soft IP cores R. Siegmund, D. Muller. 13. Modeling assistant - a flexible VCM generator in VHDL A. Puika. 14. Reusing IPS to implement a SPARC(R) SOC S. Olcoz, et al. 15. Hardwwwired: using the web as repository of VHDL components A. Sarmento, et al. References. Index. Glossary.

A Mixed-Signal Design Reuse Methodology Based on Parametric Behavioural Models with Non-Ideal Effects

Current system-on-chip (SoC) designs incorporate an increasing number of mixed-signal components. Design reuse techniques have proved successful for digital design but these rules are difficult to transfer to mixed-signal design. A top-down methodology is missing but the low level of abstraction in designs makes system integration and verification a very difficult, tedious and complex task. This paper presents a contribution to mixed-signal design reuse where a design methodology is proposed based on modular and parametric behavioural components. They support a design process where non-ideal effects can be incorporated in an incremental way, allowing easy architectural selection and accurate simulations. A working example is used through the paper to highlight and validate the applicability of the methodology.

A refinement calculus for the synthesis of verified hardware descriptions in VHDL

A formal refinement calculus targeted at system-level descriptions in the IEEE standard hardware description language VHDL is described here. Refinement can be used to develop hardware description code that is “correct by construction”. the calculus is closely related to a Hoare-style programming logic for VHDL and real-time systems in general. That logic and a semantics for a core subset of VHDL are described. The programming logic and the associated refinement calculus are shown to be complete. This means that if there is a code that can be shown to implement a given specification, then it will be derivable from the specification via the calculus.

A Sensor Technology Survey for a Stress-Aware Trading Process

The role of the global economy is fundamentally important to our daily lives. The stock markets reflect the state of the economy on a daily basis. Traders are the workers within the stock markets who deal with numbers, statistics, company analysis, news, and many other factors that influence the economy in real time. However, while making significant decisions within their workplace, traders must also deal with their own emotions. In fact, traders have one of the most stressful professional occupations. This survey merges current knowledge about stress effects and sensor technology by reviewing, comparing, and highlighting relevant existing research and commercial products that are available on the market. This assessment is made in order to establish how sensor technology can support traders to avoid poor decision making during the trading process. The purpose of this paper is: 1) to review the studies about the impact of stress on the decision-making process and on biological stress parameters that are applied in sensor design; 2) to compare different ways to measure stress by using sensors that are currently available in the market according to basic biometric principles under trading context; and 3) to suggest new directions in the use of sensor technology in stock markets.

Hardware/software co-design for IP objects based on CORBA

Innovation in the domain of reuse is driven by both the development of intellectual property (IP) components and accompanying standards for mix and match of these components within highly specialized design flows. The archiving and retrieving of IP blocks seems to be crucial since the level of quality is influenced by efficient and flexible query mechanisms. The innovation of the approach presented in the paper stems from providing an infrastructure for distributed and heterogeneous IP reuse databases based on CORBA mechanisms. The Reuse Management System (RMS) is now embedded into a CORBA environment that supports not only hardware but also software for hardware and software IP blocks and thus supports hardware/software co-design for system-on-chip (SOC) design.

Solutions on Embedded Systems

Embedded systems have an increasing importance in our everyday lives. The growing complexity of embedded systems and the emerging trend to interconnections between them lead to new challenges. Intelligent solutions are necessary to overcome these challenges and to provide reliable and secure systems to the customer under a strict time and financial budget.Solutions on Embedded Systems documents results of several innovative approaches that provide intelligent solutions in embedded systems. The objective is to present mature approaches, to provide detailed information on the implementation and to discuss the results obtained.

Why Traders Need Ambient Intelligence

Trading is widely recognized as a stressful profession. Taking decisions under stress negatively affects both, the finances and the health of the trader. Providing support to increase the awareness of traders on their real levels of stress could significantly improve their performance and well-being. This paper surveys technology available that can be considered to provide such level of support. We explore Ambient Intelligence solutions, which can provide support for two cases: a single trader and a network of traders.

A Home E-Health System for Dependent People Based on OSGI

This chapter presents a e-health system for dependent people installed in a home environment. After reviewing the state of art in e-health applications and technologies several limitations have been detected because many solutions are proprietary and lack interoperability. The developed home e-health system provides an architecture capable to integrate different telecare services in a smart home gateway hardware independent from the application layer. We propose a rule system to define users– behavior and monitor relevant events. Two example systems have been implemented to monitor patients. A data model for the e-health platform is described as well.