Abstract

ATAM is a widely known software architecture analysis method based on trade-offs of design decisions for coping with quality attribute requirements. Practically, all reported cases of applying ATAM refer mainly to software-intensive systems. However, there is a series of software systems for which fulfilling their requirements strongly depends on hardware-related decisions. As ATAM provides no special treatment for these cases, several problems arise when applying the method. In this paper we present ATAMHW, an extension to ATAM, that explicitly deals with hardware-related decisions. It adds some steps to ATAM to links quality attributes requirements of a system with hardware related decisions made by the architect. We illustrate its application for analyzing a virtual electrical generator that has been developed in the last years. © 2010 IEEE.