Model Style Guidelines for Production Code Generation

Modern electronic control units (ECUs) are increasingly being developed using Model-Based Design with production code generation. With this approach, systems and software engineers model and simulate algorithms using block diagrams, state machines and data dictionaries. Code is then automatically generated from these models and placed into rapid prototyping or production microprocessors.

The model structure and code generation configuration options significantly impact the efficiency and clarity of the design and resulting code. While clarity and efficiency may not be much of an issue when performing initial rapid prototyping evaluations on high performance computers, it is a significant concern in formal software development processes targeting low-cost, low-performance mass production ECUs. This paper describes model style guidelines and the best practices for automatically designing and generating optimized fixed-point and floating-point code.