DCS: Multiprocessor Real-Time Computing: Formal Foundations
Principal Investigator: Sanjoy K. Baruah, James H. Anderson
Funding Agency: The National Science Foundation
Agency Number: CCF-0541056
Abstract
As real-time embedded systems become ever more prevalent, important, and complex, it is becoming imperative that the formal foundations upon which the design and analysis of such systems are based keep pace with technological innovations. This proposal is addressing fundamental advances that have occurred in the real-time and embedded systems domain. First, the software that comprises such systems is becoming increasingly more complex; and second, such systems are increasingly coming to be implemented on execution platforms comprised of multiple processing units. The PIs propose to enhance the understanding of the behavior of complex, multiprocessor, real-time systems through some formal methods that attempt to model and analyze such systems in terms of feasibility, schedule ability and other important real-time constraints and issues.
Intellectual Merit
Deriving new abstract models of real-time tasks that accurately capture salient features of real-life application systems that are to be implemented on multiprocessor platforms, and identifying rules for mapping application systems onto the most appropriate models. -Designing new run-time multiprocessor scheduling algorithms that are provably better than ones currently used, both in terms of run-time efficiency and in terms of tractability of on-line analysis. -Analyzing various (current and new) task models in order to enhance our understanding of what intrinsic properties render a model intractable from a timing analysis point of view, and to identify very general classes of tractable models.
Constructing "proof-of-concept" software that validates the usefulness of the theoretical results obtained during the course of this research.
Broader Impact
All tools and development platforms implemented as part of this project will be made public, and will be disseminated over the Internet. -Development platforms will be integrated into undergraduate and graduate courses on real-time and embedded systems. -Advanced (seminar) courses and projects will be devised involving the development of experimental applications on these platforms. -A concerted effort will be made to involve under-represented groups in this research. -The PIs intend to visit some of the Historically Black Universities in their area to make presentations concerning their work, with the hope of establishing research partnerships. -Public outreach will also be accomplished by participating in UNC's long-running demo program, which is aimed at K-12 students, college students, and schoolteachers.