How to use UML in your SoC hardware/software design: Part 3

Once you have captured the semantics of your SoC application model completely in a neutral form (see Part 2), you are now ready to compile it into software and silicon. Only the semantics of the modeling language matter for translation purposes.

If a class is represented graphically as a box, or even as text, this is of no consequence. The UML is just an accessible graphical front-end for those simple elements.

When you build a 'class' such as CookingStep in a microwave oven, that represents a set of possible cooking steps you might execute, each with a cooking time and power level.

Similarly, when you describe the lifecycle of a cooking step using a state machine, it follows a sequence of states as synchronized by other state machines, external signals, and timers. And in each state, we execute some functions. All of this structure and behavior, for the entire model, is captured as data in the metamodel.