Intended Use

The ASCET tools support model-based software development. In model-based development, you construct an executable specification – the model – of your system and establish its properties through simulation and testing in early stages of development. When the model behaves as required, it can be converted automatically to production quality code.

ASCET provides a multi-paradigm modeling framework, providing integrated support for a number of different modeling notations. These modeling notations abstract from low-level details, separating the concerns of what the system software must do from how it is realized in code executing in the ECU. ASCET can also interface directly with C code as a "low-level" specification language.

ASCET provides a systematic way to augment the high-level specification (referred to as the physical model) with the necessary information for target implementation (referred to as the implementation model). The implementation model covers the low-level details required to make the model run on target hardware.

The physical and implementation models are clearly separated in ASCET so that the design specification is not corrupted with implementation details that may change from project to project. Maintaining this separation also allows ASCET to support multiple implementation models for a single physical model, keeping the number of model variants low.