Design of Embedded and Cyber-physical Systems

Prof. Dr.-Ing. Rolf Ernst

CPA (compositional performance analysis) is an approach to formal performance analysis of large embedded systems that has been developed at IDA in many projects over more than 10 years. CPA has been commercialized as SymTA/S by the IDA spin-off, Symtavision. SymTA/S is a comprehensive Software-Toolbox for formal performance analysis and optimization of embedded systems. It is used in regular design processes throughout the international automotive industry and has been applied in other domains, such as avionics. Research at IDA continues with new models and analysis techniques using the research tool pyCPA. 

• pyCPA (Python implementation of Compositional Performance Analysis)
  Publically available, extensible version of CPA, used for research at IDA and elsewhere 
  Project staff:  Jonas Peeck, Dr. Sophie Quinton (now INRIA), and many more
• more projects under completed research 

Many related projects with industry are executed by the TTZ "Embedded Systems" of the TU Braunschweig innovation center iTUBS

• UNICARagil (Disruptive modular architecture for agile, autonomous vehicle concepts)
  Modelling and analysis of a service oriented software architecture according to hard safety and real-time requirements. Concepts for the deterministic realization of end-to-end latencies focusing on network communication.
  Project research staff (IDA): Jonas Peeck, Kai Björn Gemlau (now Vector Informatik)
  The Project UNICARagil is a collaboration of 7 Universities, 16 chairs and 6 industrial partners
  Funding: Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BmBF), (ended 2023)
   
• AUTOTECH.agil („Architektur und Technologien zur Orchestrierung von automobiltechnischer Agilität - AUTOtech.agil“)
  Open software and hardware architecture for the vehicles of the future
  IDA is responsible for an extension of the timed software paradigm "Logical Execution Time" (LET) for software components to a "System-Level LET" for programming and combining large software systems of an automated vehicle.
  Project research staff (IDA): Sebastian Abel, Jonas Peeck
  Academic partners are IFR and RWTH. Industrial Partners of the IDA research are Mercedes-Benz, Vitesco, and Vector Informatik
  Funding: Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BmBF) in the MANNHEIM Framework
   
• IPF and IPF 2.0 (Information Processing Factory)
  Reaching the physical limits of semiconductor technology, future integrated circuits will be increasingly hard to operate. In a transatlantic cooperation, the IPF project opens a novel perspective by applying concepts of factory operation to future many-core architectures. IPF 2.0 extends the approach to larger networked systems emphasizing real-time data management with different types of caching. Use case: networked vehicles ("vehicle-as-a-cache"). 
  Project research staff (IDA): Nora Sperling, Dominik Stöhrmann, 
  The Project IPF is a collaboration of TU Braunschweig, TU München, and University of California, Irvine, USA
  Funding: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) and National Science Foundation (NSF), USA
   
• LOTUS (Large Object Transmission Under Safety Constraints)
  Protocols and network management for highly reliable real-time V2X (wireless vehicle-to-anything) streaming of large data objects
  Project research staff (IDA): Alex Bendrick, Daniel Tappe
  Lotus is tightly collaborating with IPF 2.0
  Funding: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)
    
• MC-ADAMS (Many-core Avionics Design, Architecture, Modeling and Simulation)
  New technologies for high-performance many-core architectures for avionics applications
  Project Research Staff: Anika Christmann, Robin Hapka
  Collaboration with TU BS Institut für Flugführung, TU Hamburg
  Funding: Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Klimaschutz (BMWK) (Luftfahrtforschung)

    In collaboration of 8 TU Braunschweig professors plus Ph.D. students, the DFG funded Research Group CCC pursued a novel approach to change in critical applications

• Project A1:  Architecture and Mechanisms of the Multi-Change Control Layer (MCCL)
  Project lead:  Rolf Ernst
  IDA Project research staff: Johannes Schlatow
   
• Project B3: Safety and Availability
  Project lead: Rolf Ernst, Harald Michalik
  IDA Project research staff: Mischa Möstl, Björn Fiethe

• Spin-off Symtavision (now part of Luxoft)