The rapid technology improvements of the semiconductor industry increases the number of available transistors per integrated circuit. Hence chips with more functions and higher complexity can be built. On the other hand, current design methods and tools cannot handle this fast growing complexity. This causes the so called design gap (or productivity gap), the difference in complexity of systems that are technologically feasible - and the complexity that can be handled by current design methods.

 

Additionally, decreasing product cycles and time to market pressures reduce the available time to design these systems.

 

Especially for automotive applications like engine control, multimedia systems, anti-locking brake systems, etc. which are composed of ASICs, sensors, embedded processors, software and analog electronics, traditional design flows reach their limitations.

 

New modelling, specification and design languages, methodologies and tools promise to close the design gap. Various approaches like C/C++-based system description, UML, SDL and Matlab/Simulink are regarded in this project.

 

The SPEAK goal is to evaluate these new languages, methodologies and especially the available design tools, focusing on the integration into current industrial design flows. The evaluation is based on industrial designs (automotive applications) provided by Bosch.