Performance Modelling of a Network Processor using POOSL
The increasing complexity of innovative real-time hardware/software systems forced industry to consider system-
level design methods. Before actually implementing a system with hardware and software components, system-level
design methods enable analysing the performance of different design alternatives that realise the required functionality.
In order to develop performance models early in the design process, the parallel object-oriented specification language
(POOSL) can be used. POOSL is an expressive modelling language for analysing complex real-time distributed
hardware/software systems. Being equipped with a formal semantics, POOSL ensures unambiguous execution of
models and proper application of performance analysis techniques. This paper discusses the use of POOSL for anal-
ysing the performance of a network processor. A network processor consists of components that perform their be-
haviour in a synchronously concurrent way, whereas POOSL is based on an asynchronous modelling paradigm. In this
paper, we illustrate that constructing abstract models of synchronous systems for the purpose of performance analysis
may benefit from an asynchronous modelling approach.
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