Giotto: A Time-Triggered Language for Embedded Programming

Giotto provides an abstract programmer’s model for the implementation of embedded control systems with hard real-time constraints. A typical control application consists of periodic software tasks together with a mode switching logic for enabling and disabling tasks. Giotto specifies time-triggered sensor readings, task invocations, actuator updates, and mode switches independent of any implementation platform. Giotto can be annotated with platform constraints such as task-tohost mappings, and task and communication schedules. The annotations are directives for the Giotto compiler, but they do not alter the functionality and timing of a Giotto program. By separating the platform-independent from the platformdependent concerns, Giotto enables a great deal of flexibility in choosing control platforms as well as a great deal of automation in the validation and synthesis of control software. The timetriggered nature of Giotto achieves timing predictability, which makes Giotto particularly suitable for safety-critical applications. Keywords—Programming languages, real-time systems, control systems, embedded software.