CSR: Small: Collaborative Research: Synthesis of Time-Controllable Digital Mockups of Physical Systems

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Embedded computers interacting with physical systems are increasingly common. Examples include medical devices, factory equipment, automobiles, and satellites. Testing embedded software during development is hard. Interacting with real physical systems, as with humans, may be dangerous or cost-prohibitive. Connecting the embedded computer to a physical mockup, like an electromechanical heart, is limited by the mockup's behavioral range. Simulating the entire system is inaccurate and slow, and does not test the actual embedded computer. Connecting the embedded computer to a digital mockup of the physical system, wherein the embedded computer's sensors/actuators are bypassed and interact instead with a physical system computer model, still suffers from the modeled part being inaccurate and slow.This project creates digital mockups that are accurate and fast by using modern field-programmable gate array (FPGA) chips. It is the first to develop automated synthesis techniques for converting numerous differential equations, forming the core of physical system models, into circuits on FPGAs. The project evaluates various differential equation solution techniques for FPGA suitability, and develops an interconnected processing element target architecture. The project supports real-time execution and time-controllable execution via lightweight kernel definition on those processing elements. It develops a system synthesis approach to explore the solution space for a given physical model and FPGA device. The project includes expansion of existing embedded systems educational material, and trains numerous graduate and undergraduate students. Ultimately, the project will catalyze use of digital mockups and hence lead to better embedded computers.