UML for electronic systems design: a comprehensive overview

Abstract: UML has been widely accepted by the software community for several years. As electronic systems design can no longer be seen as an isolated hardware design activity, UML becomes of significant interest as a unification language for systems description combining both HW and SW components. This article provides a comprehensive view of the UML applied to System-on-Chip (SoC) and hardware-related embedded systems design. The modeling concepts in the UML language are first introduced, including major diagrams for the representation of the behavior and the structure of systems. The principles behind application specific UML customizations (UML profiles) are summarized, and several examples relevant for SoC design are given, such as the SysML (System Modeling Language) and the SoC Profile. Thereafter, various approaches associating UML with existing HW/SW design languages are presented. Beyond language aspects, the article addresses the question of UML-based design flows, and shows how UML can be applied concretely to the development of electronic-based systems. The current situation about tool support constitutes the last focus of the article. In particular, we show how UML tools can be combined with well-known simulation environments, such as MATLAB.