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The world of embedded systems is very large: it includes
cellular phones, automobiles, industrial plants, home
appliances, airplanes and toys. We focus on the domain of
embedded controllers for safety critical systems. This
domain presents the most challenging problems, it is
characterized by hard real-time constraints, it has to be
fault tolerant and design-error free, and it has to react to
a non-deterministic adversary environment.
In
COLUMBUS we advocate a holistic approach to the solution of
the design problem: our approach includes methodology,
supporting tools, IP’s, hardware and software platforms, and
supply chain management. Only by taking a global,
high-level view of the problem, can we devise solutions that
are going to have a real impact on the design of embedded
systems.
On
one hand, to facilitate the design of error-free
systems, we need to start from a high-level
abstraction of system functionality that is
completely implementation independent and rests upon
solid theoretical foundations that will allow
formal analysis.
On the other, we need to select the platform that
can support the functionality meeting the physical
constraints placed on the final implementation. Once
the functional aspects of the design have been
verified and an implementation platform selected, we
need to implement the functionality onto the
platform so that its properties of interest are
maintained and the physical constraints are indeed
met. |
