Simulation with consideration of hardware characteristics and auto-generated code using matlab/simulink

There are many embedded systems in the environment. Users are demanding increasingly advanced embedded systems. For these reasons, embedded systems have became more complicated and require a lot of time for designing. Model-based programming has came into the spotlight in the embedded system industry that demands short time-to-market, especially in the automotive industry. Model-based programming allows the developer to design and implement the system easily by using blocks that provide automatic code-generation function. In addition, blocks provide the simulation function at the design and implementation step. Among the model-based programming's features, simulation is of greatest importance because accurate simulation can reduce cost, time and effort. Most simulators just estimate that the model works correctly without consideration of hardware characteristics. Therefore, this paper proposes the new hybrid-block that can simulate not only functions of the model, but also features of hardware. We develop the 16-bit embedded system for the Electronic Control Unit (ECU) in the automotive system and implement the hybrid-blocks that have two modes of automatic code-generation and simulation. The application model can be constructed by using the hybrid-block. In automatic code-generation mode, models can generate complete C program code for a specific platform without any modification. In simulation mode, the model can be simulated by considering the hardware and software characteristics of the model. In this paper, consequence of simulation with real-value in the 16-bit embedded system is compared.