Many new and planned cyber-physical systems (CPSs) are realized as distributed real-time and embedded (DRE) systems. Examples of DRE CPSs we are interested in include data computing centers and automated warehouse management systems.
Categories and Subject Descriptors
General TermsAlgorithms, Management, Design, Reliability, Verification.
KeywordsCyber-physical systems.
Emergent Traits of DRE CPSsNext generation DRE CPSs illustrate the following emergent characteristics:• Complexity and scale. As an increasing number of services are moved online, the required computing infrastructure keeps growing in complexity and scale. Effectively managing the performance of these large-scale computing systems subsequently becomes more complex, requiring increasing numbers of skilled personnel to configure, operate, and optimize them.• Dynamic and uncertain operating environment. These systems typically execute in a dynamic and uncertain operating environment caused by multiple factors such as time-varying user workload, hardware and software resource failures, incomplete knowledge of the system operating state, and other vulnerabilities, such as security violations or denial of service attacks.• Use of on-demand computing models. This is an emerging resource provisioning model to efficiently host applications, where computing resources e.g., servers, memory, and storage for data centers or warehouse resources e.g., forklifts and belts for warehouses, are dynamically made available to these applications as needed, and not statically allocated based simply on peak demand• High-confidence is an essential quality of service (QoS) property of these emergent DRE CPSs that must be considered over the entire lifecycle of these systems, including design, development, deployment, and operation. Meeting these demands using today's stovepiped technologies is tedious, error-prone, and costly to develop, optimize, validate, deploy, and maintain.
R&D Needs for DRE CPSsRealizing high-confidence software for DRE CPSs requires meeting the following criteria.• Trustworthiness -DRE CPSs must be trustworthy, which includes the system's ability to meet performance objectives, and be resilient to failures and security attacks.• Autonomicity -DRE CPSs must be autonomous i.e., self healing, self configuring and self optimizing while maintaining good resource utilization.• Analyzability -The algorithms and technologies used to develop DRE CPSs must be amenable to analyses and verification for different properties, such as timeliness guarantees, fault tolerance, stability and correctness.
Design and ArchitectureThe solution needs of high confidence DRE CPSs can be met by developing novel techniques described below and synergistically integrating them as shown in Figure 1.Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first p...