Requirements for object-oriented systems modeling with STEAMS

Designers face the challenge of specifying and implementing complicated mixed-technology systems. In order to better address mixed-signal designs, the VHDL-AMS and Verilog-AMS languages have been developed. These languages provide powerful capabilities to model and simulate behaviors in both the continuous and discrete time domains. Contemporaneously, the control systems community developed the object-oriented Modelica language to support the specification and continuous time modeling of complex control systems. The STEAMS (SUAVE and Tennessee Extensions for Analog and Mixed-Signal Systems) effort strives to provide an object-oriented systems specification and modeling language that supports both discrete and continuous time behaviors. STEAMS enables the modeling of interacting continuous and discrete time components coupled with the modeling productivity benefits associated with object-oriented techniques. This paper presents the requirements and rationale for the STEAMS language development effort, including modeling deficiencies facing the VHDL-AMS user community.