Toward optimized code generation through model-based optimization

Model-Based Development (MBD) provides an additional level of abstraction, the model, which lets engineers focus on the business aspect of the developed system. MBD permits automatic treatments of these models with dedicated tools like synthesis of system's application by automatic code generation. Real-Time and Embedded Systems (RTES) are often constrained by their environment and/or the resources they own in terms of memory, energy consumption with respect to performance requirements. Hence, an important problem to deal with in RTES development is linked to the optimization of their software part. Although automatic code generation and the use of optimizing compilers bring some answers to application optimization issue, we will show in this paper that optimization results may be enhanced by adding a new level of optimizations in the modeling process. Our arguments are illustrated with examples of the Unified Modeling Language (UML) state machines diagrams which are widely used for control aspect modeling of RTES. The well-known Gnu Compiler Collection (GCC) is used for this study. The paper concludes on a proposal of two step optimization approach that allows reusing as they are, existing compiler optimizations.