SAE Issues New Standard for Universal Language for Embedded Software and Hardware
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| The AS5506/1: SAE Architecture Analysis and Design Language (AADL) Document, released this summer, is an international standard that provides predictable model-based engineering of real-time and embedded computer systems. It complements the AS5506 AADL standard SAE Architecture Analysis and Description Language, published in 2004. The new document is made up of annexes to the SAE AS5506 standard.
- The first annex, Annex A: Graphical AADL Notation, describes graphical symbols for the graphical AADL notation. These symbols illustrate relationships between components, features, and connections in an AADL model.
- The second annex, Annex C: AADL Meta Model and Interchange Formats, defines the AADL meta model and XML-based interchange formats for AADL models.
- The third annex, Annex D: Language Compliance and Application Program Interface, establishes language-specific rules for source text to comply with an architecture specification written in AADL.
- Annex E: Error Model Annex, a forth annex, defines a standardized extension to AADL that enables addition of fault and dependability information to AADL-based system architecture models in the context of such dependability analysis methods as hazard analysis, reliability analysis, and failure mode and effects analysis. It identifies features that enable redundancy management specification and risk mitigation methods and allow qualitative and quantitative appraisal of such system properties as safety, integrity, availability, reliability, and maintainability. This annex defines a sublanguage that can be used to declare error models within a library and link them with components in an architecture specification.
The intended areas of application for AADL are avionics and space, automotive systems, medical devices, and industrial process control equipment. In these fields, AADL performs several functions. It represents embedded systems as component-based architecture, it models component interactions, it models task execution and communication with precise timing semantics, and it models execution platform and specifies application binding. It also represents operational modes and fault tolerant configurations. The language can support component evolution and development and accommodate reliability and safety analyses.
Benefits include the ability to predict and validate such runtime characteristics as availability, timeliness, and security. AADL enables validated system architectures and implementations, and it improves the process of development with a single annotated architecture model. It also provides for interoperability and integration of commercial and in-house tools. The language works as part of a model-based enterprise solution.
Those who benefit from the use of AADL include researchers looking for an architecture research platform with links to practitioners, engineering firms hoping to provide solutions to the embedded computing systems community, program managers who are charged with development of large-scale performance-critical systems, and software systems engineers who are responsible for architecting and integrating embedded systems on target platforms. The standard was written and created by SAE International's AS-2 Embedded Computing Systems Committee.
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