Reference Designs and Architectures
The first part of the Strategic Research Agenda (SRA) of ARTEMIS relates to the development of generic reference designs and architectures for embedded systems.The ARTEMIS subgroup on Reference Designs and Architectures has been created in order to work towards the achievement of this goal. In order to put the work of the Reference Designs and Architectures Working group in the proper perspective we quote verbatim the Section of the ARTEMIS Strategic Research Agenda that relates to this topic [1] p.16: The objective is the creation of a generic platform and a suite of abstract components with which new developments in different application domains can be engineered with minimal efforts.A well-conceived platform will also allow the addition of application-specific modules, thereby increasing the reach of the reference design into more advanced and diverse application domains. They will challenge the functional and physical complexity issues and embrace all areas of target applications, also addressing functional and non-functional items such as:
- Composability: a framework that supports the smooth integration and reuse of independently developed components is needed in order to increase the level of abstraction in the design process.
- Dependability and security: The provision of a generic framework that supports safe, secure, maintainable, reliable and timely system services despite the accidental failure of system components and the activity of malicious intruders is essential.
- High-performance embedded computing: for scalable multiprocessor computing architectures and systems incorporating heterogeneous networked and reconfigurable components. The increase by several orders of magnitude of computing densities (FLOPs per liter and FLOPs per Watt) will be key for achieving embedded intelligence in areas such as perception, multi-media content analysis, autonomy, etc.
- Low power: the advent of Giga-scale SoCs will require system level techniques for handling the power dissipation of silicon.
- Interfacing to the environment: new ways of interfacing with the natural and the man-made environments, and in particular more intuitive ways for humans to interact with both technical systems and each other.
The work of the subgroup on Reference Designs and Architectures is structured into a number of phases. The first already completed phase established the requirements and constraints that originate from the different application domains and take account of the technological developments and idiosyncrasies of the diverse embedded applications. In the following phases architecture proposals that meet these requirements and constraints will be solicited from the European industrial and research communities and prototypes of number of selected candidate proposals will be implemented. After a careful evaluation of these prototypes one or more ARTEMIS reference designs will be selected. This report documents the results of the first phase of the work of the working group, the Requirements and Constraints Collection and Analysis. It is structured as follows: Section 1 gives an overview of the landscape of embedded systems. Section 2 presents the results of the requirements and constraints capturing phase. It is based on a taxonomy of requirements and constraints (listed in Annex I) and an evaluation (listed in Annex II). Section 3 collects expert opinions on the state of the art and on the research challenges in the field of embedded systems. Section 4 discusses the research priorities that have to be taken into account when creating a generic platform and a suite of components with which new developments in different application domains can be engineered with minimal effort [1]. Generic platforms, or reference designs, will be based on a common architectural style that supports the composition of systems out of pre-validated independently developed subsystems that meet the requirements of the different application domains. Finally Section 5 contains a way towards the establishment of the ARTEMIS generic platforms.
Working Groups have indentified research priorities for this domain in this document:
<link to documents: rapport_rda>
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