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Authors: Thomas Ball, Peli de Halleux, James Devine, Steve Hodges, and Michał Moskal
Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages, Volume 8, Issue PLDI
Article No.: 175, Pages 692 - 715
Published: 20 June 2024 Publication History
Related Artifact: Jacdac: Service-based Prototyping of Embedded Systems (PLDI 2024 Artifact Evaluation) June 2024datahttps://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10892762
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Abstract
The traditional approach to programming embedded systems is monolithic: firmware on a microcontroller contains both application code and the drivers needed to communicate with sensors and actuators, using low-level protocols such as I2C, SPI, and RS232. In comparison, software development for the cloud has moved to a service-based development and operation paradigm: a service provides a discrete unit of functionality that can be accessed remotely by an application, or other service, but is independently managed and updated. We propose, design, implement, and evaluate a service-based approach to prototyping embedded systems called Jacdac. Jacdac defines a service specification language, designed especially for embedded systems, along with a host of specifications for a variety of sensors and actuators. With Jacdac, each sensor/actuator in a system is paired with a low-cost microcontroller that advertises the services that represent the functionality of the underlying hardware over an efficient and low-cost single-wire bus protocol. A separate microcontroller executes the user's application program, which is a client of the Jacdac services on the bus. Our evaluation shows that Jacdac supports a service-based abstraction for sensors/actuators at low cost and reasonable performance, with many benefits for prototyping: ease of use via the automated discovery of devices and their capabilities, substitution of same-service devices for each other, as well as high-level programming, monitoring, and debugging. We also report on the experience of bringing Jacdac to commercial availability via third-party manufacturers.
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Index Terms
Jacdac: Service-Based Prototyping of Embedded Systems
Computer systems organization
Embedded and cyber-physical systems
Embedded systems
Embedded software
Firmware
Software and its engineering
Software organization and properties
Software system structures
Abstraction, modeling and modularity
Embedded software
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Published In
Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages Volume 8, Issue PLDI
June 2024
2198 pages
EISSN:2475-1421
DOI:10.1145/3554317
- Editor:
- Michael Hicks
Amazon, USA
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Copyright © 2024 Owner/Author.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution International 4.0 License.
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Association for Computing Machinery
New York, NY, United States
Publication History
Published: 20 June 2024
Published inPACMPLVolume 8, Issue PLDI
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