Jornadas de Seguimiento de Proyectos, 2007 Programa Nacional de Tecnologías Informáticas SODA: Heterogeneous System Design based on a Distributed Object Architecture TIN2005-08719 Juan Carlos López * , Fernando Rincón, Francisco Moya, Jesús Barba, Félix Jesús Villanueva, David Villa University of Castilla-La Mancha School of Computer Science - Paseo de la Universidad 4 – 13071 Ciudad Real Abstract This project is aimed at giving response to some of the current problems the designer has to face when designing state-of-the-art embedded systems, mainly the heterogeneity of the system components and the underlying communication mechanisms. The key point is to abstract any system resource as a distributed object, able to offer some services through a standardized communications infrastructure called middleware. The middleware will guarantee the connection between every system object; at the same time it will supply some services such as location transparency or dynamic object management, so as to be able to build flexible platforms than can adapt themselves in runtime to the application needs. A new concept, the distributed heterogeneous system, appears: its components are defined by the service they offer to the rest of the system, independently of their implementation and their location. Keywords: Distributed Object Architecture, Communications, Middleware, Embedded System Design 1 Project Goals The evolution of the design methodologies, able to cope with more and more complex designs, is based on the raise of the abstraction level, at the same time they focus on more functional aspects, getting the designer rid of implementation details, and automating the low level tasks. In the last years, the way to get systems with better performance has been to connect multiple components (on-chip and off-chip) cooperating with each other. This approach, driven also by the needs of the new applications (i.e. ambient intelligence) has added new problems to system design. Now, besides the heterogeneity of the different system components (hardware and software), they use also different and heterogeneous means of communications. A new concept appears: the distributed heterogeneous system, * Email: juancarlos.lopez@uclm.es