SHF: Small: Automating the Deployment of Distributed Real-time and Embedded System Software using Hybrid Heuristics-based Search Techniques

该奖项是根据2009年美国复苏和再投资法案(公法111-5)资助的。现代汽车和飞行航空电子系统形成了复杂的分布式实时和嵌入式(DRE)系统。一辆高端豪华车可以有80多个电子控制单元(ECU)，这些ECU是小型嵌入式处理器，以及连接这些处理器的多个网络。此外，数百个软件组件可以分布在这些联网的ECU上。通过将软件更紧密地打包到处理器上来优化这些软件组件的部署，可以减少所需的底层基础设施的大小，并具有许多积极的副作用，如重量和功耗节省。由于必须处理大量复杂的约束，如实时调度约束、组件放置限制和容错保证，确定如何在DRE系统中将软件部署到硬件是一个具有挑战性的问题。这项研究工作集中在开发新的混合启发式和元启发式技术，以确定如何将软件部署到计算节点。这些算法和工具将通过由45个全球镜像分发的通用Eclipse建模系统(http://www.eclipse.org/gmt/gems)，)和Escher工具库以开源方式提供。将通过范德比尔特大学现有的机制寻找外展机会，例如名为TRUST的NSF科学和技术中心以及接待暑期研究学生的范德比尔特科学外展中心(CSO)。我们将继续支持属于代表性不足群体的研究生。

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).Modern automobiles and flight avionics systems form complex distributed real-time and embedded (DRE) systems. A high-end luxury car can have over 80 Electronic Control Units (ECUs), which are small embedded processors, and multiple networks linking the processors. Furthermore, several hundred software components can be distributed across these multiple networked ECUs. Optimizing the deployment of these software components, by packing the software more tightly onto the processors, can reduce the size of the required underlying infrastructure and have numerous positive side-effects, such as weight and power consumption savings.Determining how to deploy software to hardware in DRE systems is a challenging problem due to the large number of complex constraints that must be dealt with, such as real-time scheduling constraints, component placement restrictions, and fault-tolerance guarantees. This research effort focuses on developing new hybrid heuristic and meta-heuristic techniques for determining how to deploy software to computational nodes. The algorithms and tools will be made available in open source through the Generic Eclipse Modeling System (http://www.eclipse.org/gmt/gems), which is distributed by 45 world-wide mirrors, and the ESCHER tool repository. Opportunities for outreach will be sought through existing mechanisms in place at Vanderbilt University, such as the NSF Science and Technology Center called TRUST and Vanderbilt Center for Science Outreach (CSO) to host summer research students. We will continue to support graduate students belonging to underrepresented groups.