Rialto 2.0: A language for heterogeneous computations

Abstract

Modern embedded systems are often heterogeneous in that their design requires several description paradigms, based on different models of computation and concurrency (MoCCs). In this paper we present Rialto, a formal language intended at expressing computations in several MoCCs. The distinguishing features of Rialto and its implementation are 1) A formal semantics: the language is formalized using SOS (structured operational semantics) rules; 2) Encapsulation of models of computation into policies: we thus distinguish between the syntactic elements of the language (parallelism, interrupts) and its semantics; 3) efficient implementation algorithms. Policies are expressed in the language itself, which allows for more expressive power and a sounder semantics.