The initial aim of the framework is to allow the enhanced development of complex real-time systems in the fields of aerospace and defense.
Supported by the European Commission, the Methods and Tools for Avionics and Surveillance Embedded Systems (MADES) project is investing 3.5 million euros to develop the framework, which will cover all phases of real time systems development.
The MADES consortium includes The Open Group; the University of York; the Polytechnic University of Milan and Cassidian, an EADS company involved in global security solutions and systems; and Softeam, an embedded systems technology supplier specialising in advanced model driven architectures.
Plans call for the platform-independent framework to maintain the robust reliability that is essential for safety and mission-critical applications, while at the same time providing improvements in developer productivity, reusability of code, and lower costs for maintenance and retargeting to newer multi-core platforms.
According to The Open Group, Softeam is directing the research to ensure the MADES project results meet the highest level of standards for reliability and real-time performance within the industry.
The main objective of the MADES project is to develop new model-based verification and simulation methods - along with new model-based code generation methods and tools that will address both conventional programming languages and hardware description languages.
Plans call for the MADES tools to provide developers with the ability to more easily reuse existing software components, as well as ensuring the consistency of complex systems, and exploit advanced multi-core hardware platforms.
“Embedded systems developers require new tools and methods based on recognised standards to design complex applications utilising model-driven development methods”, said Flavio Fusetti, director of aerospace and defence business at TXT e-solutions, the lead organization in the project.
“The MADES project will provide an evolutionary path that integrates existing development methods providing a way forward to more advanced model-based design. These development techniques will also enable real-time systems developers to achieve higher performance levels, greater reliability, and scalability with increasingly sophisticated multi-core platforms”, he added.
Over at The Open Group, David Lounsbury, the group’s chief technical officer, said that the MADES consortium partners are experts in each phase of model-driven systems development.
“This project will bring new innovations to the process of transforming software designs into deployable systems that have the required reliability and assurances for safety-critical applications”, he said.
“We’re confident the powerful model-based tools already being evaluated by industrial partners will allow applications developers to be more productive and manage expected increases in system complexity”, he added.