Scalability and Complexity Management

Cyber-physical systems are inherently heterogeneous, since at a minimum they combine physical dynamics with computational processes. But they are often heterogeneous even within the physical and cyber domains. The physical domain may be multi-physics, combining for example mechanical motion control, chemical processes, biological processes, and human operators. The cyber domain may combine networking technologies, programming languages, software component models, and concurrency mechanisms. Software in CPS applications can grow to very large systems. The challenge, therefore, is to provide design methologies and tools that support those methologies, that scale to large designs, facilitate analysis, and promote understanding of complex systems. The problems include: