Towards an efficient partitioning decision process for embedded systems

Development process of advanced embedded industrial automation applications is highly sensitive to an efficient design approach. Widely used approaches in automation industry for design are based on both hardware and software expertise which are not often completely combined in synergic ways. Traditionally design starts too early and gets separated into hardware design and software design at very early stage which negatively impacts the overall application development process due to issues such as mutual flow interruptions and redesigns. In order to minimize or even overcome to the aforementioned issues, this paper presents and discusses a new systematic design approach able of enabling software-independent hardware design as well as hardwareindependent software design to a later stage and able of minimizing the hardware and software mutual dependencies after the separation which collectively improves the overall development process.