Large Language Models (LLMs) have shown increasing potential in automating model-driven software engineering tasks, particularly in generating models conforming to Domain Specific Languages (DSLs) from natural language. While most existing approaches rely on large proprietary models, their high cost and limited deployability hinder broader adoption. In this paper, we evaluate whether open-source LLMs of varying sizes (0.5B to 32B parameters) can generate DSL-conformant models using only few-shot prompting, without any fine-tuning. Our evaluation focuses on key model-driven engineering (MDE) requirements, including syntactic validity, semantic completeness, and inter-model reference consistency. We extend our prior work by moving from generating user interface models (referred to as “UI models” in this paper) over fixed, predefined data schemas (“data models”) to generating both the UI and data models entirely from scratch. This shift serves two purposes: first, it highlights the LLM’s ability to infer domain-specific relationships and maintain consistency across multiple interconnected models; second, it allows us to generalize earlier findings by testing DSL generation across models of different natures and structural roles. Our structured evaluation combines automatic parsing and expert feedback across 39 LLMs, revealing that several compact models (e.g., gemma3:12b, mistral:7b-instruct) approach or match the quality of much larger models. These findings demonstrate the feasibility of using smaller, open-source LLMs for grammar-conformant DSL generation in MDE workflows, offering a cost-effective and deployable alternative to closed LLMs.

Precision Timed (PRET) is a conceptual solution proposed in 2007 to address the ever increasing unpredictability of embedded processors, which results from features such as multi-level caches or deep pipelines. For many real-time systems, it is mandatory to compute a strict bound on the program's execution time. Yet, in general, computing a tight bound is extremely difficult. The rationale of PRET is to simplify both the programming language and the execution platform to allow precise execution times to be easily computed. ForeC is a PRET programming language. It is a multithreaded variant of C with a synchronous execution semantics. ForeC programs are designed to be executed on multi-core processors, built around either PRET cores or classical cores. A drawback of ForeC is that programs are single rate, i.e., all reactions must be implemented to run at the fastest rate imposed by the environment. This represents a high overhead, both at design time and at run-time. In this paper, we propose a multi-rate version of ForeC to improve its practicality and usability for industrial acceptance. We detail the syntax and semantics of the ForeC language in the context of multi-rate applications and present an implementation on a PRET multi-core architecture. Both the languages and its implementation are illustrated over a robotic application.

In this paper, we propose a new approach for the predictability and optimality of the inter-core communication and execution of tasks allocated on different cores of multicore architectures. Our approach is based on the execution of synchronous programs written in the ForeC programming language on deterministic architectures called PREcision Timed. The originality of the work resides in the time-triggered model of computation and communication that allows for a very precise control over the thread execution. Synchronization is done via configurable Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) arbitrations where the optimal size and offset of the time slots are computed to reduce the inter-core synchronization costs. We implemented a robotic application and simulated it using MORSE, a robotic simulation environment. Results show that the model we propose guarantees time-predictable inter-core communication, the absence of concurrent accesses (without relying on hardware mechanisms), and allows for optimized execution throughput.

This paper is an evaluation of UML for Real-Time (UML-RT) for modelling Self-Adaptive Software (SAS) systems. Using a systematic review of the different features of UML-RT (optional capsules, SAP/SPP communication, hierarchical state machines, etc.), we analyse the suitability of the language for modelling structural and behavioural adaptations at design-and run-time. We evaluate these features in the context of their current state of support in Papyrus-RT, an Eclipse-based MDE tool for UML-RT recently developed by the Eclipse PolarSys Working Group. The use of UML-RT and Eclipse Papyrus for Real-Time (Papyrus-RT) for different kinds of adaptation is demonstrated using two real-time system case studies.

Providing proper support for debugging models at model-level is one of the main barriers to a broader adoption of Model Driven Development (MDD). In this paper, we focus on the use of MDD for the development of real-time embedded systems (RTE). We introduce a new platform-independent approach to implement model-level debuggers. We describe how to realize support for model-level debugging entirely in terms of the modeling language and show how to implement this support in terms of a model-to-model transformation. Key advantages of the approach over existing work are that (1) it does not require a program debugger for the code generated from the model, and that (2) any changes to, e.g., the code generator, the target language, or the hardware platform leave the debugger completely unaffected. We also describe an implementation of the approach in the context of Papyrus-RT, an open source MDD tool based on the modeling language UML-RT. We summarize the results of the use of our model-based debugger on several use cases to determine its overhead in terms of size and performance. Despite being a prototype, the performance overhead is in the order of microseconds, while the size overhead is comparable with that of GDB, the GNU Debugger.

Embedded System (ES) development complexity is increasing. This increase has several cumulative sources: some are directly related to constraints on the ES themselves (dependability, compute intensive, resource constraints) while other sources are related to the industrial context of their development (fast prototyping, early validation, parallelization of developments). Although several Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) processes have been proposed for ES development, most of them are not completely formalized. This has several drawbacks that prevent their use in prototyping where iterations need to be short and focused. Incomplete formalized processes tend to be sidestepped in these situations where quick results are expected to be obtained with limited effort. In this paper we propose a MDE-based process for ES development. This process precisely defines the development tasks and their impact on the models throughout development. In particular we define iterations width and depth for the process that allow for a fined-grained and consistent planning of developments. The short and well defined iterations characterized by the process reduce the gap between rapid prototyping, ad-hoc methods and regular development processes.

The complexity of Embedded System (ES) development is increasing dramatically. This has several cumulative sources: the intricate combination of data-intensive, computational and control aspects; the ubiquity of parallelism and heterogeneity of modern architectures; and the diversity of target-specific, non-deterministic programming models (e.g., C++ with explicit message passing, OpenCL, VHDL). Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) proposes to manage complexity by raising the level of abstraction for designers and developers, and refining the implementation for a particular context and platform through model transformations. In such frameworks, behavior is often specified by means of Hierarchical State Machines (HSMs) equiped with an action language. However, although such models represent some level of control parallelism through objects and HSMs, data parallelism, compound data, and the exploitation and optimization thereof remains very limited.