Hardware Architecture of Vending Machines

A hardware system is complex that it comprises multiple views such as strategy/version n, strategy/version n+1, concept, analysis, design, implementation, structure, behavior and input/output data views. Accordingly, a hardware system is defined as a set of interacting components forming an integrated whole of that hardware system's multiple views. Since structure and behavior views are the two most prominent ones among multiple views, integrating the structure and behavior views is a method for integrating multiple views of a hardware system. In other words, structure-behavior coalescence (SBC) is a single model (model singularity) approach which results in the integration of multiple views. Therefore, it is concluded that the SBC architecture is so appropriate to model the multiple views of a hardware system. In this book, we use the SBC architecture description language (SBC-ADL) to describe and represent the hardware architecture of the vending machine. An architecture description language is a special kind of system model used in defining the architecture of a hardware system. SBC-ADL uses six fundamental diagrams to formally grasp the essence of a hardware system and its details at the same time. These diagrams are: a) architecture hierarchy diagram, b) framework diagram, c) component channel diagram, d) component connection diagram, e) structure-behavior coalescence diagram and f) interaction flow diagram. Hardware architecture is on the rise. By this book's introduction and elaboration of the hardware architecture of the vending machine, all readers may understand clearly how the SBC-ADL helps architects effectively perform architecting, in order to synergistically construct the fruitful hardware architecture.