A novel framework for design and analysis of embedded software with variable constraints

现代嵌入式系统需要在设计时考虑可能需要随时间改变其行为的应用程序。为了在不同的情况下运行应用程序，嵌入式系统需要考虑不同的用户驱动约束，如安全性、安全性或可用性，以及面向系统的约束，如成本、时间、能耗和吞吐量。然而，这些约束可能相互对立，因此，改善一个约束意味着接受另一个约束的恶化。例如，物理冗余可能会提高安全性，同时也会增加攻击面，从而降低安全性。平衡约束提供了良好的系统性能；然而，在需要优化特定约束或约束组合的情况下，这可能不适用于应用程序。在不同配置下操作嵌入式系统的需求与可变约束相关联，促进了由一组创新设计和分析方法和工具组成的新框架的发展。

Modern embedded systems need design considerations for applications that may require changing their behavior over time. To run an application in different situations, embedded systems need to consider different user-driven constraints such as safety, security, or usability, and system-oriented constraints such as cost, timing, energy consumption, and throughput. However, these constraints may oppose each other, and therefore improving one means accepting deterioration in another. For example, physical redundancy might increase safety while also increasing the attack surface and thereby reducing security. Balancing the constraints provides a good performance of the system; however this might not work well for applications in situations that require optimization of a particular constraint or a combination of constraints. The requirement to operate an embedded system in different configurations associated with variable constraints fosters the development of a novel framework composed of a set of innovative design and analysis methods and tools. Several research problems exist in designing an embedded software with variable constraints. First, selecting an efficient set of design elements and their configurations is challenging because of the evolving requirements of tasks and messages in an application and the presence of a wide variety of embedded systems. Secondly, proper analysis on tolerable delays for variable constraints is required to reduce overprovisioning of resources. The framework will map workloads into different configurations or modes, where each configuration optimizes a particular or a combination of constraints. However, mapping variable constraints to multiple modes may require adaptation of an existing scheduling strategy or a new one. Moreover, an application can provide acceleration of performance upon multiprocessor platforms, but the mapping of workloads to processors requires rigorous analysis. Finally, analytics is necessary to identify uncertainties and generate recommendations for configuration changes or adaptations. The proposed framework for design and analysis of embedded software comprises the following research activities: (1) efficient selection of design elements and their configurations, (2) analyzing delays for workloads with variable constraints, (3) mapping variable constraints to multiple modes, and (4) processing of events and analytics. Throughout the research process, students will receive specialized training in high-demand embedded software and gain skills which will introduce new embedded software design practices, achieving a closer coupling of user- and system-oriented constraints. The outcomes promise to improve Canadians' ability to gain insights from economically and socially important case studies in domains from consumer electronics to the Internet of Things.