CAREER: Performance Analysis and Tradeoff for System-Level Design Exploration of Real-Time Embedded Systems

本研究致力于开发设计实时嵌入式系统的方法和工具，目的是提供一个工具环境，帮助设计人员探索广阔的设计空间，并找到优越的系统架构配置。这种方法是在系统级或处理器级的抽象层次上工作，并将问题描述为一个捕获系统设计中各种质量需求的多属性优化问题。正在处理的具体主题是：1.通过研究系统配置相对于定时规范的灵活性来评估定时性能，并制定用于估计系统灵活性的度量。2.开发接口工具，帮助系统开发人员指定值函数和首选项。3.将不精确指定的多属性效用理论与进化算法相结合，求解多目标优化问题的最优解。

This research is on developing methodologies and tools for designing real-time embedded systems with the goal of providing a tool environment to help designers explore a vast design space and locate superior system architectural configurations. The approach is to work at the system level or processor level of abstraction and to formulate the problem as a multi-attribute optimization one which captures various quality requirements in system design. Specific topics being addressed are: 1. Evaluating timing performance through studying the flexibility of a system configuration with respect to timing specifications, and formulating metrics for estimating the flexibility of systems. 2. Developing an interface tool for assisting system developers to specify value functions and preferences. 3. Combining the imprecisely specified multi-attribute utility theory with evolutionary algorithms to find optimal solutions for multiple objective optimization problems.