e-PG Pathshala

Subject : Computer Science

Paper: Embedded System

Module: Embedded System Design Process
Module No: CS/ES/33

Quadrant 1 – e-text

In this lecture various steps involved in Embedded system design process will be discussed.

1. Design process steps:

There are different steps involved in Embedded system design process. These steps depend on
the design methodology. Design methodology is important for optimizing performance, and
developing computer aided design tools. It also makes communication between team members
easier. Figure1 shows the steps in the design process. They are requirements gathering,
specification formulation, architecture design, building of components, and system integration.

Figure 1. Steps in Design process

The steps in the design process can be viewed as top down view and bottom up view.
Top–down view begins with the most abstract description of the system and concludes
with concrete details. Bottom–up view starts with components to build a system.
Bottom–up design steps are shown in the figure as dashed-line arrows. We need
bottom–up design because we do not have perfect insight into how later stages of the
design process will turn out.
The major goals of the design to be considered are :
 ● Manufacturing cost;
● Performance (both overall speed and deadlines) and
● Power consumption.

The tasks which need to be performed at each step are the following.
● We must analyze the design at each step to determine how we can meet the
specifications.
● We must then refine the design to add details.
● We must verify the design to ensure that it still meets all system goals, such as
cost, speed, and so on.

We will discuss each step of the design process in detail.

1.1 Requirements

Informal descriptions gathered from the customer are known as requirements. The
requirements are refined into a specification to begin the designing of the system
architecture. Requirements can be functional or non-functional requirements. Functional
requirements need output as a function of input. Non-functional requirements includes
performance, cost, physical size, weight, and power consumption. Performance may be a
combination of soft performance metrics such as approximate time to perform a user-level
function and hard deadlines by which a particular operation must be completed. Cost
includes the manufacturing, nonrecurring engineering(NRE) and other costs of designing
the system. Physical size and weight are the physical aspects of the final system. These
can vary greatly depending upon the application. Power consumption can be specified in
the requirements stage in terms of battery life.
Example:
Let us consider an example of a GPS system. The sample Requirement Form is shown in
Figure 2.

Figure 2. Requirements chart

1.2 Specification
 Requirements gathered is refined into a specification. Specification serves as the
contract between the customers and the architects. Specification is essential to create
working systems with a minimum of designer effort. It must be specific, understandable
and accurately reflect the customer’s requirements.

Example:
Considering the example of the GPS system, the specification would include details for
several components:
• Data received from the GPS satellite constellation
• Map data
• User interface
• Operations that must be performed to satisfy customer requests
• Background actions

1.3 Architecture Design

The specification describes only the functions of the system. Implementation of the
system is described by the Architecture. The architecture is a plan for the overall
structure of the system. It will be used later to design the components.The architecture
will be illustrated using block diagrams as shown below.

Example:
A basic block diagram of the GPS system shows the major operations and the data
flow among the blocks.

Figure 3. GPS system data flow and operations

This block diagram( figure 3) is an initial architecture that is not based either on
hardware or on software but combination of both. This block diagram explains about
GPS navigating system where GPS receiver gets current position and the destination is
taken from user, digital map for source to destination is found from database and
displayed by the renderer. The system block diagram may be refined into two block
diagrams - hardware and software.

1.3.1 Hardware block diagram :

Figure 4. GPS system hardware

Hardware consists of one central CPU surrounded by memory and I/O devices. We
have chosen to use two memories that is frame buffer for the pixels to be displayed and
separate program/data memory for general use by the CPU. The GPS receiver is used
to get the GPS coordinates, and the panel I/O is used to get the destination from the
user.

1.3.2 Software block diagram :

 Figure 5. GPS system software

The software block diagram closely follows the system block diagram. We have added a
timer to control when we read the buttons on the user interface and render data onto the
screen.

To have a truly complete architectural description, we require more details, such as

where units in the software block diagram will be executed in the hardware block
diagram and when the operations will be performed in time.

Architectural descriptions must be designed to satisfy the functional and non-functional

requirements. Not only must all the required functions be present, but we must meet
cost, speed, power and other non- functional constraints. Starting out with a system
architecture and refining that to hardware and software architectures is one good way to
ensure that we meet all specifications. We can concentrate on the functional elements
in the system block diagram, and then consider the non- functional constraints when
creating the hardware and software architectures.

How do we know that our hardware and software architectures in fact meet constraints
on speed, cost, and so on?
• Estimate the properties of the components in the block diagrams (Example:
search and rendering functions in the moving map system)
• Accurate estimation derives in part from experience, both general design and
particular experience.
• All the non- functional constraints are estimated. If the decisions are based on
bad data, those results will show up only during the final phases of design.

1.4 Hardware and Software components

The architectural description tells us what components we need. The component design
effort builds those components in conformance to the architecture and specification.
The components in general includes both hardware and software modules. Some of the
components will be ready-made (example :CPU, memory chips).

Example:
In the moving map, GPS receiver is a predesigned standard hardware component.
Topographic software is a standard software module which uses standard routines to
access the database. Printed circuit board are the components which needs to be
designed. Lots of custom programming is required.

When creating these embedded software modules, ensure the system runs properly in
real time and that it does not take up more memory space than allowed. The power
consumption of the moving map software example is particularly important. You may
need to be very careful about how you read and write memory to minimize power. For
example, memory transactions must be carefully planned to avoid reading the same
data several times, since memory accesses are a major source of power consumption.

1.5 System integration

After the components are built, they are integrated. Bugs are typically found during the
system integration. Good planning can help us to find the bugs quickly. By debugging a
few modules at a time, simple bugs can be uncovered. By fixing the simple bugs early,
more complex or obscure bugs can be uncovered. System integration is difficult
because it usually uncovers problems. The debugging facilities for embedded systems
are usually much more limited than the desktop systems. Careful attention is needed to
insert appropriate debugging facilities during design which can help to ease system
integration problems.

2. Summary

In the Embedded system design process, information is first collected and refined in the
Requirement step. Specification uses the refined information to describe the functions of
the system which accurately reflects the customer’s requirements and also serves as
the contract between the customer and the designer. The functions described by the
specification are implemented by the Architecture design. The architectural design
describes the components we need which will include both the hardware and software
components. After the components are built, they are integrated to get the final system.

3. References
1. Wayne Wolf, “Computers as components: Principles of embedded computing
systems design”; Second edition, published by Morgan Kaufmann series(2008).