An evolutionary approach to the use of petri net based models : from parallel controllers to Hw/Sw codesign

摘要

The main purpose of this article is to present how Petri Nets (PNs) have beenused for hardware design at our research laboratory. We describe the use of PNmodels to specify synchronous parallel controllers and how PN specificationscan be extended to include the behavioural description of the data path, by usingobject-oriented concepts. Some hierarchical mechanisms which deal with thespecification of complex digital systems are highlighted. It is described a designflow that includes, among others, the automatic generation of VHDL code to synthesizethe control unit of the system. The use of PNs as part of a multiple-viewmodel within an object-oriented methodology for hardware/software codesignis debated. The EDgAR-2 platform is considered as the reconfigurable targetarchitecture for implementing the systems and its main characteristics are shown.