CRTS 2016

9th International Workshop on Compositional Theory and Technology for Real-Time Embedded Systems (CRTS 2016)

collocated with RTSS 2016

Background
Large safety-critical real-time systems are typically created through the integration of multiple components that are developed mostly independently from each other. This creates a challenge for the timing verification of both the independent components and the integrated system as a whole given that traditional real-time scheduling techniques required full knowledge of the task set and resources of the whole system contrasting with need of component independence. The challenges stemming from this situation can be categorized in three broad areas. First, at the system decomposition stage it is necessary to fix the component timing interfaces for each of the components in order to ensure the schedulability of all the components and to enable each component-development team to define their own task sets and perform internal schedulability test. A key tradeoff in this area is efficiency (schedulable utilization) vs internal flexibility. Flexibility, in particular, is a key aspe!
ct at this stage when only incomplete information on component tasks, period, deadlines and most importantly execution time (among other parameters) is available. Secondly, safety-critical systems demand some form of certification. In this case, compositional technology should be able to provide human-processable assurance arguments for component-integration timing correctness and component isolation while at the same time providing sound component schedulability techniques. Finally, during the system evolution new compositional technologies should enable us to isolate the effect of changes not only around the current decomposition structure but also allow us to reshape the decomposition structure or provide multiple levels of composition to limit the scope of the impact of the changes.
CRTS invites papers that describe not previously published state-of-the-art research, work-in-progress, or suggest open problems covering one or more of the topics of interest to the workshop.

Submissions

CRTS invites papers that describe not previously published state-of-the-art research, work-in-progress, or suggest open problems covering one or more of the topics of interest to the workshop. Two alternative submission types are accepted:

• Regular paper:
  • Submissions should not exceed 8 pages in two-column, single-space, 10pt format (ACM SIG proceedings templates / SIGBED Review submission guidelines);
• Extended abstract for work-in-progress / open problems:
  • Maximum 2 pages.

Accepted papers will appear in a special issue of ACM SIGBED Review.

Topics include but are not limited to

Timing Interfaces and decomposition:

• Cross-domain timing interfaces / contracts (for control theory, fault-tolerance, security, etc.), hierarchical decomposition / layers, decomposition structure refactoring, flexibility / efficiency tradeoffs
• Early-design interfaces: decomposition of timing requirements, WCET approximations / bounds
• Early task set parameter interfaces: tolerating changes in number of tasks, periods, deadlines, etc.
• Early platform interfaces: tolerating changes in processor speed, networks bandwidth, arbitration algorithms
• Composition of heterogeneous schedulers

Platform issues:

• Compositional technology for different processors: single-core, multi-core, distributed
• Multi-core memory hierarchy interfaces (cache, RAM, inter-core link interconnects, etc.)
• Compositional technology for networks

Assurance / certification:

• Integration timing arguments: technology and challenges for evidence and arguments generation
• Isolation arguments: verification of isolation mechanisms, generation of isolation certification proofs
• Composition of validation and verification techniques

Isolation mechanisms:

• Virtualization, servers, reservation, microkernels, symmetric and asymmetric protection for multi-criticality systems, modal systems

Compositional technology for global systems:

• Applications: Internet of Things (IoT), smart highway, smart electric grid, industrial cloud infrastructure
• Compositional technology/theory for open architectures: dynamic addition / removal of components, interfaces for future unknown components, dynamic evolution: dynamic deployment of composition / isolation mechanisms

Schedulability theory:

• Efficiency metrics: bounds (augmentation / utilization), isolation metrics: quantifying internal component flexibility, approximate / exact analysis techniques and tradeoffs, trade-offs between optimality, associativity, and complexity in compositional theory

Workshop proceedings

All accepted papers will appear in a special issue of ACM SIGBED Review. By submitting to the workshop, the authors are granting permission for ACM to publish the paper in print and digital formats for the newsletter and the ACM Digital Library. Authors retain copyright.

Program Chairs

• Saad Mubeen, Malardalen University, Sweden
• Geoffrey Nelissen, CISTER/INESC-TEC, Portugal

Organizing Committee

• Insup Lee, University of Pennsylvania, USA
• Thomas Nolte, Malardalen University, Sweden
• Insik Shin, KAIST, South Korea
• Oleg Sokolsky, University of Pennsylvania, USA

Program Committee

• Lothar Thiele, ETH Zurich, Switzerland
• Arvind Easwaran, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
• Stavros Tripakis, University of California, Berkely, USA
• Julio Medina, University of Cantabria, Spain
• Aneta Vulgarakis Feljan, Ericsson Research, Sweden
• Luca Santinelli, ONERA, France
• Jerome Hugues, ISAE, France
• Tullio Vardanega, Universita di Padova, Italy
• Enrico Bini, University of Torino, Italy
• Hang Yin, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden
• Zhenkai Zhang, Vanderbilt University, USA
• Moris Behnam, Malardalen University, Sweden