Abstract
Cyber-physical systems are integrations of computation, communication networks, and physical dynamics. Although time plays a central role in the physical world, all widely used software abstractions lack temporal semantics. The notion of correct execution of a program written in every widely-used programming language today does not depend on the temporal behavior of the program. But temporal behavior matters in almost all systems, and most particularly in cyber-physical systems. In this talk, I will argue that time can and must become part of the semantics of programs for a large class of applications. To illustrate that this is both practical and useful, we will describe a recent effort at Berkeley in the design and implementation of timing-centric software systems. Specifically, I will describe PRET machines, which redefine the instruction-set architecture (ISA) of a microprocessor to embrace temporal semantics. Such machines can be used in high-confidence and safety-critical systems, in energy-constrained systems,in mixed-criticality systems, and as a Real-Time Unit (RTU) that cooperates with a general-purpose processor to provide real-time services, in a manner similar to how a GPU provides graphics services.

Electronic downloads

• Lee_ArchCPS_ASPLOS_Abstract.pdf · application/x-octet-stream · 159 kbytes
• http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2694344.2694375

• HTML

  Edward A. Lee. <a
  href="http://chess.eecs.berkeley.edu/pubs/1106.html"
  >Architectural Support for Cyber-Physical
  Systems</a>, <i>Proceedings of the Twentieth
  International Conference on Architectural Support for
  Programming Languages and Operating Systems, ACM, 1, March,
  2015; Published by ACM, New York, NY, USA.

• Plain text

  Edward A. Lee. "Architectural Support for
  Cyber-Physical Systems". <i>Proceedings of the
  Twentieth International Conference on Architectural Support
  for Programming Languages and Operating Systems, ACM, 1,
  March, 2015; Published by ACM, New York, NY, USA.

• BibTeX

  @inproceedings{Lee15_ArchitecturalSupportForCyberPhysicalSystems,
      author = {Edward A. Lee},
      title = {Architectural Support for Cyber-Physical Systems},
      booktitle = {<i>Proceedings of the Twentieth International
                Conference on Architectural Support for
                Programming Languages and Operating Systems},
      organization = {ACM},
      pages = {1},
      month = {March},
      year = {2015},
      note = {Published by ACM, New York, NY, USA.},
      abstract = {Cyber-physical systems are integrations of
                computation, communication networks, and physical
                dynamics. Although time plays a central role in
                the physical world, all widely used software
                abstractions lack temporal semantics. The notion
                of correct execution of a program written in every
                widely-used programming language today does not
                depend on the temporal behavior of the program.
                But temporal behavior matters in almost all
                systems, and most particularly in cyber-physical
                systems. In this talk, I will argue that time can
                and must become part of the semantics of programs
                for a large class of applications. To illustrate
                that this is both practical and useful, we will
                describe a recent effort at Berkeley in the design
                and implementation of timing-centric software
                systems. Specifically, I will describe PRET
                machines, which redefine the instruction-set
                architecture (ISA) of a microprocessor to embrace
                temporal semantics. Such machines can be used in
                high-confidence and safety-critical systems, in
                energy-constrained systems,in mixed-criticality
                systems, and as a Real-Time Unit (RTU) that
                cooperates with a general-purpose processor to
                provide real-time services, in a manner similar to
                how a GPU provides graphics services. },
      URL = {http://chess.eecs.berkeley.edu/pubs/1106.html}
  }
  

Posted by Mary Stewart on 8 Jul 2015.
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