research-article

A Synchronous Look at the Simulink Standard Library

Authors:

Timothy Bourke,

Francois Carcenac,

Jean-Louis Colaço,

Cédric Pasteur,

Marc PouzetAuthors Info & Claims

ACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems (TECS), Volume 16, Issue 5s

Article No.: 176, Pages 1 - 24

https://doi.org/10.1145/3126516

Published: 27 September 2017 Publication History

Abstract

Hybrid systems modelers like Simulink come with a rich collection of discrete-time and continuous-time blocks. Most blocks are not defined in terms of more elementary ones—and some cannot be—but are instead written in imperative code and explained informally in a reference manual. This raises the question of defining a minimal set of orthogonal programming constructs such that most blocks can be programmed directly and thereby given a specification that is mathematically precise, and whose compiled version performs comparably to handwritten code.

In this paper, we show that a fairly large set of blocks of a standard library like the one provided by Simulink can be programmed in a precise, purely functional language using stream equations, hierarchical automata, Ordinary Differential Equations (ODEs), and deterministic synchronous parallel composition. Some blocks cannot be expressed in our setting as they mix discrete-time and continuous-time signals in unprincipled ways that are statically forbidden by the type checker.

The experiment is conducted in Zélus, a synchronous language that conservatively extends Lustre with ODEs to program systems that mix discrete-time and continuous-time signals.

References

[1]

Rajeev Alur. 2011. Formal Verification of Hybrid Systems. In Proceedings of the 9th ACM International Conference on Embedded Software (EMSOFT). ACM, Taipei, Taiwan, 273--278.

Digital Library

[2]

Karl J. Åström and Richard M. Murray. 2008. Feedback Systems: An Introduction for Scientists and Engineers. Princeton University Press, NJ, USA.

Digital Library

[3]

Albert Benveniste, Timothy Bourke, Benoit Caillaud, Bruno Pagano, and Marc Pouzet. 2014. A Type-based Analysis of Causality Loops in Hybrid Systems Modelers. In Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Hybrid Systems: Computation and Control (HSCC). ACM, Berlin, Germany, 71--82.

Digital Library

[4]

Albert Benveniste, Timothy Bourke, Benoit Caillaud, and Marc Pouzet. 2011. A Hybrid Synchronous Language with Hierarchical Automata: Static Typing and Translation to Synchronous Code. In Proceedings of the 9th ACM International Conference on Embedded Software (EMSOFT). ACM, Taipei, Taiwan, 137--147.

Digital Library

[5]

Albert Benveniste, Timothy Bourke, Benoit Caillaud, and Marc Pouzet. 2011. Divide and recycle: types and compilation for a hybrid synchronous language. In Proceedings of the ACM SIGPLAN/SIGBED Conference on Languages, Compilers, Tools and Theory for Embedded Systems (LCTES). ACM, Chicago, USA, 61--70.

Digital Library

[6]

Albert Benveniste, Timothy Bourke, Benoit Caillaud, and Marc Pouzet. 2012. Non-Standard Semantics of Hybrid Systems Modelers. Journal of Computer and System Sciences (JCSS) 78, 3 (May 2012), 877--910. Special issue in honor of Amir Pnueli.

Digital Library

[7]

Albert Benveniste, Paul Caspi, Stephen A. Edwards, Nicolas Halbwachs, Paul Le Guernic, and Robert de Simone. 2003. The synchronous languages 12 years later. Proc. IEEE 91, 1 (Jan. 2003), 64--83.

[8]

Gérard Berry. 1989. Real time programming: Special purpose or general purpose languages. Information Processing 89 (1989), 11--17.

[9]

Olivier Bouissou and Alexandre Chapoutot. 2012. An operational semantics for Simulink’s simulation engine. In Proceedings of the 13th ACM SIGPLAN/SIGBED International Conference on Languages, Compilers, Tools and Theory for Embedded Systems (LCTES). ACM, Beijing, China, 129--138.

Digital Library

[10]

Timothy Bourke, Jean-Louis Colaço, Bruno Pagano, Cédric Pasteur, and Marc Pouzet. 2015. A Synchronous-based Code Generator For Explicit Hybrid Systems Languages. In Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Compiler Construction (CC) (Lecture Notes in Computer Science). Springer, London, UK, 69--88.

[11]

Timothy Bourke and Marc Pouzet. 2013. Zélus, a Synchronous Language with ODEs. In Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Hybrid Systems: Computation and Control (HSCC). ACM, Philadelphia, USA, 113--118.

Digital Library

[12]

Luca Carloni, Maria D. Di Benedetto, Alessandro Pinto, and Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli. 2004. Modeling Techniques, Programming Languages, Design Toolsets and Interchange Formats for Hybrid Systems. Technical Report. IST-2001-38314 WPHS, Columbus Project.

[13]

Jean-Louis Colaço and Marc Pouzet. 2004. Type-based Initialization Analysis of a Synchronous Data-flow Language. International Journal on Software Tools for Technology Transfer (STTT) 6, 3 (August 2004), 245--255.

[14]

M. Dowell and P. Jarratt. 1972. A modified regula falsi method for computing the root of an equation. BIT Numerical Mathematics 11, 2 (June 1972), 168--174.

[15]

Esterel Technologies SAS 2016. Gateway Guidelines for Simulink. Esterel Technologies SAS.

[16]

John T. Feo, David C. Cann, and Rodney R. Oldehoeft. 1990. A report on the Sisal language project. J. Parallel and Distrib. Comput. 10 (1990), 349--366.

Digital Library

[17]

Léonard Gérard, Adrien Guatto, Cédric Pasteur, and Marc Pouzet. 2012. A Modular Memory Optimization for Synchronous Data-Flow Languages. Application to Arrays in a Lustre Compiler. In Proceedings of the 13th ACM SIGPLAN/SIGBED International Conference on Languages, Compilers and Tools for Embedded Systems (LCTES). ACM, Beijing, 51--60.

Digital Library

[18]

Nicolas Halbwachs, Paul Caspi, Pascal Raymond, and Daniel Pilaud. 1991. The Synchronous Dataflow Programming Language Lustre. Proc. IEEE 79, 9 (September 1991), 1305--1320.

[19]

Grégoire Hamon. 2005. A denotational semantics for Stateflow. In Proceedings of the 5th ACM International Conference on Embedded Software (EMSOFT). ACM, Jersey City, NJ, USA, 164--172.

Digital Library

[20]

Gregoire Hamon and John Rushby. 2004. An Operational Semantics for Stateflow. In Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Fundamental Approaches to Software Engineering (FASE) (Lecture Notes in Computer Science), Vol. 2984. Springer, Barcelona, Spain, 229--243.

[21]

Alan C. Hindmarsh and Radu Serban. 2016. User Documentation for cvode v2.9.0 (v2.9.0 ed.). Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA, USA.

[22]

Edward A. Lee and Haiyang Zheng. 2005. Operational Semantics of Hybrid Systems. In Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Hybrid Systems: Computation and Control (HSCC) (Lecture Notes in Computer Science), Vol. 3414. Springer, Zurich, Switzerland, 25--53.

Digital Library

[23]

Oded Maler, Zouar Manna, and Amir Pnueli. 1992. From Timed to Hybrid Systems. In Proceedings of the REX Workshop Real-Time: Theory in Practice (Lecture Notes in Computer Science), Vol. 600. Springer, Mook, The Netherlands, 447--484.

Digital Library

[24]

Lionel Morel. 2007. Array Iterators in Lustre: From a Language Extension to Its Exploitation in Validation. EURASIP Journal on Embedded Systems 2007, 1 (2007), article 059130.

[25]

Jean-Michel Muller, Nicolas Brisebarre, Florent de Dinechin, Claude-Pierre Jeannerod, Vincent Lefèvre, Guillaume Melquiond, Nathalie Revol, Damien Stehlé, and Serge Torres. 2010. Handbook of Floating-Point Arithmetic. Birkhäuser, Basel, Switzerland.

[26]

B. C. Pierce. 2002. Types and Programming Languages. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, USA.

Digital Library

[27]

Kohei Suenaga, Hiroyoshi Sekine, and Ichiro Hasuo. 2013. Hyperstream Processing Systems: Nonstandard Modeling of Continuous-time Signals. In Proceedings of the 40th Annual ACM SIGPLAN-SIGACT Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages (POPL). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 417--430.

Digital Library

[28]

Stavros Tripakis, Christos Sofronis, Paul Caspi, and Adrian Curic. 2005. Translating Discrete-Time Simulink to Lustre. ACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems 4 (2005), 779--818. Issue 4. Special Issue on Embedded Software.

Digital Library

[29]

Stavros Tripakis, Christos Stergiou, Chris Shaver, and Edward A. Lee. 2013. A modular formal semantics for Ptolemy. Mathematical Structures in Computer Science 23, 4 (008 2013), 834--881.

Cited By

Boll AVieregg NKehrer T(2024)Replicability of experimental tool evaluations in model-based software and systems engineering with MATLAB/SimulinkInnovations in Systems and Software Engineering10.1007/s11334-022-00442-w20:3(209-224)Online publication date: 1-Sep-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s11334-022-00442-w
Sun QZhang WWang CLiu Z(2023)A contract-based semantics and refinement for hybrid Simulink block diagramsJournal of Systems Architecture10.1016/j.sysarc.2023.102963143(102963)Online publication date: Oct-2023
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sysarc.2023.102963
Zhang WSun QWang CLiu Z(2023)Towards correctness proof for hybrid Simulink block diagramsJournal of Systems Architecture10.1016/j.sysarc.2023.102922141(102922)Online publication date: Aug-2023
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sysarc.2023.102922
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

A Synchronous Look at the Simulink Standard Library

Recommendations

A hybrid synchronous language with hierarchical automata: static typing and translation to synchronous code
EMSOFT '11: Proceedings of the ninth ACM international conference on Embedded software

Hybrid modeling tools like Simulink have evolved from simulation platforms into development platforms on which testing, verification and code generation are also performed. It is critical to ensure that the results of simulation, compilation and ...
Building a hybrid systems modeler from synchronous language principles
EMSOFT '15: Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Embedded Software

Hybrid systems modeling languages are widely used in the development of embedded systems. Two representatives are Simulink/Stateflow¹ that combine Ordinary Differential Equations (ODEs), data-flow and difference equations, hierarchical automata a la ...
Zélus: a synchronous language with ODEs
HSCC '13: Proceedings of the 16th international conference on Hybrid systems: computation and control

Zélus is a new programming language for modeling systems that mix discrete logical time and continuous time behaviors. From a user's perspective, its main originality is to extend an existing Lustre-like synchronous language with Ordinary Differential ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems

ACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems Volume 16, Issue 5s

Special Issue ESWEEK 2017, CASES 2017, CODES + ISSS 2017 and EMSOFT 2017

October 2017

1448 pages

ISSN:1539-9087

EISSN:1558-3465

DOI:10.1145/3145508

Editor:
Sandeep K. Shukla
Indian Institute of Technology, India

Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2017 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Journal Family

ACM Journals for the Design of Smart and Connected Systems

Publication History

Published: 27 September 2017

Accepted: 01 June 2017

Revised: 01 June 2017

Received: 01 April 2017

Published in TECS Volume 16, Issue 5s

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article
Research
Refereed

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

9
Total Citations
View Citations
99
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)5
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)0

Reflects downloads up to 15 Oct 2024

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Boll AVieregg NKehrer T(2024)Replicability of experimental tool evaluations in model-based software and systems engineering with MATLAB/SimulinkInnovations in Systems and Software Engineering10.1007/s11334-022-00442-w20:3(209-224)Online publication date: 1-Sep-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s11334-022-00442-w
Sun QZhang WWang CLiu Z(2023)A contract-based semantics and refinement for hybrid Simulink block diagramsJournal of Systems Architecture10.1016/j.sysarc.2023.102963143(102963)Online publication date: Oct-2023
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sysarc.2023.102963
Zhang WSun QWang CLiu Z(2023)Towards correctness proof for hybrid Simulink block diagramsJournal of Systems Architecture10.1016/j.sysarc.2023.102922141(102922)Online publication date: Aug-2023
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sysarc.2023.102922
Xu XZhan BWang STalpin JZhan N(2023)A denotational semantics of Simulink with higher-order UTPJournal of Logical and Algebraic Methods in Programming10.1016/j.jlamp.2022.100809130(100809)Online publication date: Jan-2023
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jlamp.2022.100809
Zhang WSun QWang CLiu Z(2022)Proving Simulink Block Diagrams Correct via RefinementWireless Communications & Mobile Computing10.1155/2022/80158962022Online publication date: 1-Jan-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1155/2022/8015896
Sun QZhang WWang CLiu Z(2022)A Contract-Based Semantics and Refinement for SimulinkDependable Software Engineering. Theories, Tools, and Applications10.1007/978-3-031-21213-0_9(134-148)Online publication date: 11-Dec-2022
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21213-0_9
Xu XWang SZhan BJin XTalpin JZhan N(2021)Unified Graphical Co-modeling, Analysis and Verification of Cyber-Physical Systems by Combining AADL and Simulink/StateflowTheoretical Computer Science10.1016/j.tcs.2021.11.008Online publication date: Nov-2021
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tcs.2021.11.008
Ro JMalik ARoop PRoop PZhan NGao SNuzzo P(2019)A compositional semantics of Simulink/Stateflow based on quantized state hybrid automataProceedings of the 17th ACM-IEEE International Conference on Formal Methods and Models for System Design10.1145/3359986.3361198(1-11)Online publication date: 9-Oct-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3359986.3361198
Liebrenz THerber PGlesner S(2018)Deductive Verification of Hybrid Control Systems Modeled in Simulink with KeYmaera XFormal Methods and Software Engineering10.1007/978-3-030-02450-5_6(89-105)Online publication date: 11-Oct-2018
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02450-5_6

View Options

Get Access

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Article

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

View Issue’s Table of Contents