University of Kansas Electrical Engineering Computer Science WPDRTS 2004 Tuesday April 27, 2004 Challenge Problem Session

University of Kansas Electrical Engineering Computer Science Challenge Problem Context Real-Time and embedded systems are being applied to an ever wider range of application areas Embedded control systems for industrial automation, vehicles, military systems, etc This expanding range of application areas brings with it a widening range of system constraints Real-time and application specific scheduling of CPU and other resources Power Memory Footprint Configurability of many kinds of system behavior

University of Kansas Electrical Engineering Computer Science Challenge Problem These trends challenge system designers because it presents two difficult scenarios Support a large number of hardware and software systems that are each appropriate for a narrow range of applications Support a small number of hardware and software systems that are each appropriate for a wide range of applications What methods for hardware and software design can be used to address the needs of this wide range of application areas by contributing to solution of one of these problems

University of Kansas Electrical Engineering Computer Science Discussion Points Commodity CPU designs will dominate because of economies of scale Only one or two systems on a chip will exist Customized hardware and software will become common because configuration from standard components will be easy and cheap Only a few system HW/SW architectures will dominate because they will be good for everything Power will remain a significant constraint on system realization for the foreseeable future

University of Kansas Electrical Engineering Computer Science Discussion Points Tension between the wish for COTS and customizability will not be resolved until functionality focused system composition techniques are refined to include QoS dimensions (Kopetz) Power, scheduling, application specific computation Reconfigurable Hardware will provide the best economic path for realizing customized SoC platforms

University of Kansas Electrical Engineering Computer Science Discussion Points The configuration effort for really complex systems will require significant self-organizing support to be practical Emergent properties and behavior are antithetical to security and certification How much will this depend on flavors of emergent Certification of systems will become increasingly important and require HW and SW designed to permit it as a first principle