Incremental updateable control systems on an FPGA

Component-based development of embedded system software has proven to be a cost effective methodology, and many general component technologies are available from both industry and academia. Often times such modular updating and upgrading can be too expensive (in cost, manpower, and down time) to execute. This is especially true for safety- and time-critical applications where rigorous requalification processes are necessary after a software change. A theoretical approach to incremental or modular certification would provide the ability to use particular subsystems in a modular fashion, but this requires both functional and time behaviour independence of the module. In this research a component-based software model was used to develop incrementally updateable multiprocessor architecture for a reconfigurable FPGA computing technology. The developed system architecture was designed in the MATLAB/Simulink environment and evaluated through a case study of an embedded home automation control system. A new functionality was added to the initial system, and later reconfigured into the FPGA-chip as a new processor-module. Different memory architectures of the multiprocessor system and their relations to the changes in temporal behaviour of the system were tested and measured. With the best memory configuration, the average change in internal temporal behaviour of the system processors of initial functionality after system upgrading was smaller than 0.5 µs.