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Synchronization after design refinements with sensitive delay elements

Abstract:

The synchronous computational model with its simple computation and communication mechanism makes it easy to describe, simulate and formally verify synchronous embedded systems at a high level of abstraction. In synchronous models, a local refinement increasing the delay in a single computation block may affect the functionality of the entire model. We provide a synchronization algorithm that preserves the system's functionality after design refinements, by using additional synchronization delays and making some delays sensitive to their input values. The refined and synchronized model stays latency equivalent to the original model. The advantages of our approach are the following: (a) we remain fully within the synchronous model of computation, (b) we preserve the functionality of the existing computation blocks, and (c) we do not require additional computation resources, specific communication protocols, wrapper circuits around computation blocks or schedulers. Copyright 2007 ACM.