Typical Specifications Outline

• Overview. What do these specifications cover?
• Related documents. ANSI/IEEE specs, other product documents.
• Description. Brief description of software and what it does. For example:
• Operator interface
• Interfaces to other software modules and other systems
• Any proprietary protocols should be spelled out in detail
• Hardware that is controlled
• Algorithms for controlling hardware
• Any assumptions about how the hardware works
• A list of interrupts and tasks
• Priority level
• Usage
• Level vs edge-sensitive, etc.
• Memory organization and usage
• Software tools used for development
• Special requirements. e.g. compute-intensive calculations such as floating-point on integer processor
• Appendix. Any calculations that go into the software design, such as:
• Flow charts of complicated algorithms
• Maximum interrupt latency for critical interrupts
• Worst-case processing time (is the CPU fst enough?)