Rosetta: semantic support for model-centered systems-level design

With the advent of system-on-chip (SoC) technology, the design of small electrical systems has become a systems engineering task. Such tasks require working at high levels of abstraction to build systems by either integrating information from various design domains or modeling different aspects of the same component. Designers of traditional computer-based systems usually rely on component-based techniques that parallel the physical architecture. The model-based approach encompasses the component-centered approach, treating structural decomposition as a single model in the overall hierarchy. Model-centered semantics and languages let designers concentrate on the data, computation, or communication models that describe complex computer-based SoC requirements. Appropriate design semantics specify each system aspect, and the designer assembles those aspects into models to define complete systems and components. The developers of Rosetta, a heterogeneous systems-level modeling language that supports predictive design analysis, have identified mechanisms for defining and composing models that specify multiple domains of interest from many perspectives. Rosetta requirements and domains define test cases and generate abstract vectors for each test scenario. Several analysis tools are under development for transforming Rosetta into existing analysis environments, and the authors describe their authors are also developing native analysis tools for symbolic verification and simulation environments. The authors use Rosetta to provide computation models for customized digital and mixed-signal system-specification environments. Other domains to support, optical and microelectrical mechanical systems specifications are under consideration.