COM interfaces editor

This is Kactus2 extension


COM interface means that component supports an optional "high-level" communication mechanism, such as MCAPI. Purpose is to increase portability by abstacting the details of communication. COM interfaces are connected together in system view of the Kactus. Usually, these interfaces a part of a SW component, but some HW components can support them also. COM interfaces makes only loose coupling between SW components, and consequently the receiver can be mapped on different CPU than sender. COM interfaces are meant for communication between application modules, whereas API interfaces are mainly between application and platform (OS, drivers) and inside the platform.

Each interface has a mandatory name and direction (in, out, inout). Optional COM definition is an XML document that captures the interface properties, similarly to bus interfaces in regular HW components. Note that this information is just shown here and can be edited on interface editor. Optional transfer type denotes what kind of data is transmitted through the interface. The allowed values depend on the selected COM definition.

For example, a SW component could have an input COM interface 'data_in' and output called 'result_out'. Then depending of how the channels are conencted in system design, the imput data can come from, say, UART or CPU. Similarly, the result can be directed to, say, memory or VGA. Here both interfaces correspond to MCAPI endpoints and transmit 'MCAPI messages'.
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