EMBEDDED BEANS

Introduction to Embedded Beans technology

Embedded Beans - essential components for the system level codesign of HW and SW

The world of embedded applications often needs a deep knowledge of both hardware and software to determine what portions should be implemented in hardware and what in software. Embedded Beans component format is designed to provide unified interface for both hardware and software entities, which compose target embedded systems as well as target application software. The developer of embedded systems combines hardware and software Embedded Beans during the process of application creation. Embedded Beans user interface is conventional - properties, methods, events. The interface can be supported by the common Object Inspector way.

Embedded Beans are programming language independent

Embedded Beans are organized in format sections and a Beanīs author provides the required language implementation - even non object oriented - in C, Modula- 2, assembler, JAVA, DSL, VHDL, and others. When used in Processor Expert workbench, Embedded Beans provides an output in the required language during the process of target code generation. So, a programmer of embedded systems can use his or her favorite language and compiler or tool when working with the Processor Expert.

Embedded Beans are a superset of the existing component formats

Embedded Beans format should be treated as a superset of the existing component models specification, it collects them but it does not modify the standards. So for instance Sun JAVA Bean can be put into the Embedded Beans.

Embedded Beans allow to choose between the hardware or software implementation

Embedded Beans, which contain both software and hardware implementation, can be mutually interchanged to provide the desired output - for instance to C for pure software implementation or to DSL+C for a hardware implementation with the necessary code in C.

Embedded Beans provides more reuseability and easy system configuration

There are two groups of users in the component world. One group writes and provides components, the second builds applications from the existing components. Embedded Beans provides much more sharable and reusable entities than the pure software components known from Visual Basic, Delphi and others, because of its multi-language and multi-target description capability. The producer of a given LCD display could supply a highly configurable bean which encapsulates the functionality of the provided hardware. The design of systems with such a display would be much faster then thanks to the simple installation and utilization of such a bean in the Processor Expert Environment. The beans could be exchanged on WWW, their updates could be placed on pages dedicated to the hardware. There is a possibility to protect implementation parts for sales purposes or demo versions.

Creating of the Embedded Beans is easy and supports inclusion of existing software

There is an efficient way how to create and modify Embedded Bean sources and how to include the existing code in different languages. Processor Expert Environment provides a tool called Embedded Beans Wizard, which allows to define a new bean or to modify an existing one. Embedded Beans Wizard generates all necessary workaround text and files, making the process of bean creation much faster and easier. Such operation is provided for several programming languages in parallel using predefined or user specified data types. Online documentation of the bean is generated also in the form of HTML based documents.

Embedded Beans Inspector - control of bean during design time (runtime)

The Embedded Beans Inspector makes the settings of the Bean interface easy at design time. The property settings are done by making selections among available options. One does not need to seek any source file to make a change! It is possible to influence both hardware and software related properties and configure the target system under the Processor Expert intelligent feedback, which reflects the system design status and

• detects various kinds of collisions - in particular Processor Expert checks hardware entity (peripheral) usage consistence - for instance pin usage, compare registers usage, prescalers usage, and more
• brings intelligent hints for the property settings
• allows selectable inclusion of the methods
• handles event creation
• adds developer's own bean-related comments
• speeds up location of the appropriate source code in the Processor Expert built-in editor

Embedded Beans Features

• Embedded Beans encapsulate the functionality of basic elements of embedded systems like CPU core, CPU on-chip peripherals, standalone peripherals, virtual devices, programmable arrays, and pure software algorithms and express these facilities using properties, methods, and events (like objects in OOP)
• essential components for the system level codesign of the HW and SW
• programming language independent, Embedded Beans can hold any language including assembler
• superset of the existing component formats
• Embedded Beans allow to choose target implementation (HW or SW)
• Embedded Beans provides more reuseability and an easy system configuration
• Embedded Beans are easy to create (editable in ASCII format or through the Embedded Beans Wizard).
• Embedded Beans support inclusion or encapsulation of existing software

Peripheral Initialization Beans

These beans are subset of the Embedded Beans on the lowest level of abstraction. An interface of such beans is based on the set of peripheral control registers. These beans cover all features of the peripherals and were designed for initialization of these peripherals. The runtime control of the peripheral is managed completely by user using a low-level techniques like PESL of direct control registers access. The interface of these beans might be different for a different CPU.

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