With the rising popularity of embedded systems came challenges due to new application demands, increasing complexity and widening productivity gap. To deal with these issues, model-driven development promotes a higher level of abstraction and uses models as the primary artifacts. In fact, the fundamental principle is to construct a model of a system and then transform it into the real system.

We focus on DEMES, a model-driven approach based on DEVS, and especially the transition from simulated platform to execution platform. We present real-time executives that allow DEVS models to be executed on a target platform without the need of an operating system. In addition to the real-time executives, we introduce a hardware abstract layer that supports several hardware peripheral libraries and fosters fast prototyping. We also illustrate the DEMES-driven development cycle with a particular case study. Our contributions have resulted in a reduced footprint, increased performance and platform portability.