Polychrony

Polychrony is an integrated development environment and technology demonstrator for computer-aided embedded software design. It is based on a synchronous multi-clocked model of computation implemented in the data-flow language Signal. The toolset consists of a compiler, a model checker and control synthesiser.

Polychrony is developed by the project-team Espresso, whose scientific objectives are to  define and implement models, methods and tools for the computer-aided engineering of trusted application architectures in embedded and mission-critical software. Polychrony is free software available at http://www.irisa.fr/espresso/Polychrony

Features

• Unified model-driven design environment (synchronous, multi-clocked, Signal dataflow specification language, validation and verification with the Sigali and Coq tools, ...)
  
• Simulation of embedded software architectures
• Code-generation
  
• Model Transformation towards SynDEx tool in order to generate machine-specific real-time scheduled code

How to use Polychrony?

Polychrony is integrated with Eclipse by a plugin which allows for the interactive, multi-view, modelling and edition interface, transformation, verification and visualisation interface, of high-level behavioural specifications consists of hybrid mode-automata and block diagrams.

As a result, Polychrony provides a unified model-driven design environment to perform embedded software design exploration by using correctness-preserving design methodologies formally supported by design model transformations from specification to implementation  and from synchrony to asynchrony.

sample of screenshot for Polychrony

Interests and outcomes

Polychrony supports the synchronous, multi-clocked, dataflow specification language Signal. It allows to perform  validation and verification tasks, e.g., with the integrated Sigali model checker or the Coq theorem prover.

Being primarily aimed at the exploration and simulation of large-scale, embedded software architectures, it inter-operates with several code-generation back-ends, such as the Syndex tool, to generate machine-specific real-time scheduled code.

The company TNI supplies its commercial implementation, RT-Builder, used for industrial scale projects by Snecma/Hispano-Suiza, Airbus Industries, PSA (see http://www.tni-software.com). Past and present industrial collaborators of project Espresso through European, French and bilateral collaborations include CS, CEA, MBDA, AONIX, THALÈS, EDF, AIRBUS, EADS, CNES.

Related links

• Polychrony's official web site: http://www.irisa.fr/espresso/Polychrony/
• Informations about Sigali: http://www.irisa.fr/vertecs/Logiciels/sigali.html