ArtistDesign NoE

Matlab-Simulink and Synchronous Languages

2006-07-10T16:13:57Z

Matlab-Simulink has established itself as the de-facto standard for highly engineering-oriented embedded systems industries, such as automobile and aeronautics. Matlab provides high quality support for domain specific and control engineering as well as scientific engineering in general and visualization. Simulink itself, with its add-on Stateflow, provides an integrated description and simulation environment for hybrid systems, both dataflow and state based.

ARTIST2 partners are the founders of synchronous languages, such as Esterel, Lustre, and Signal, which are widely used in the aeronautics/avionics industries. These languages are semantically close to Matlab/Simulink. ARTIST2 partners have developed a semantic framework for graphical notations such as those found in Simulink/Stateflow, and have improved on code generation, formal validation, and architecture generation for Matlab/Simulink.

ARTIST2 research activities – and specifically through the “Real-Time Components” cluster - will aim to develop results for distributed architecture generation, from Matlab/Simulink specifications. While not contributing directly to a “standard” in the usual sense, this work could provide the basis for improving the existing technology, or even for developing an independent European technology to replace Matlab/Simulink.

20. ETHERNET Powerlink

Bruno Bouyssounouse, Luis Almeida — 2006-07-10T15:54:47Z

University of Aveiro

Name of the Standard ETHERNET Powerlink, current version - 2 (EPL v2)

Expected next major release date Unknown

Technical area(s) which it addresses Hard real-time systems

Short description of the standard Provision of real-time communication services on top of Ethernet COTS with low latency and jitter.

Technical gains Open standard. Real-time over Ethernet COTS. Good control over transmission instants. Well adapted to the remote control of motor-drives, particularly servo-drives. Supports very short cycle times.

Previous revisions/versions on which it is based Based on EPL v2

Name of the relevant standardisation body EPSG - ETHERNET Powerlink Standardization Group

Main leader or contact person within this standardisation body Dr. Edwin Kiel (Lenze Drive Systems GmbH), chairman of the EPSG board of directors

Industrial domains impacted Industrial automation, large distributed embedded systems

Industrial gains

Efficient support for tight distributed control of motion processes

Name of the your team Univ. Aveiro

Responsibilities in the standard definition We are ordinary members of EPSG since mid 2004 and have had a rather passive participation until now. Our interest is to increase participation by proposing changes that will allow higher throughput and will enforce higher system integrity, without losing the tight transmission control typical of this protocol.

Main other non-ARTIST participants in the standardisation process These are the members of the Board of Directors and also represent the institutions/companies that are more active in the standard.

Dr. Edwin Kiel (Lenze Drive Systems GmbH), chairman
Prof. Thomas Müller (Zürcher Hochschule Winterthur)
Andreas Dreher (Hirschmann Automation and Control GmbH)
Prof. Dr. Konrad Etschberger (FH Ravensburg-Weingarten)
Anton Meindl (Bernecker + Rainer Industrie-Elektronik GmbH)

However, the EPSG has now 134 members and users.

40. POSIX, IEEE 1003

Bruno Bouyssounouse — 2006-07-10T15:47:37Z

Michael Gonzalez Harbour is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electronics and Computers at the University of Cantabria. He works in software engineering for real- time systems. He is a co-author of "A Practitioner's Handbook on Real-Time Analysis". He has been involved in several projects using Ada to build real-time controllers for robots.

Michael is an active member of the POSIX real-time working group. He is the Technical Editor of the IEEE POSIX.1d and IEEE POSIX.1j standards. He teaches a graduate-level course on Real-Time Posix at his University and at the Polytechnical University of Madrid, and has given talks and tutorials on this subject at different conferences and workshops.

POSIX is the international standardization of a Unix-like operating system application program interface, with the objective of portability of applications at the source code level. Although initially POSIX was developed for general-purpose computing systems, real-time extensions have been added that make it possible to implement operating systems that can support portability of applications with real-time requirements. Today, most commercial real-time operating systems provide support for the POSIX interfaces.

POSIX is currently developed by two organizations in cooperation: IEEE, a well-known professional association, and X/Open, an industrial consortium. ARTIST2 core partner University of Cantabria has been actively participating in the POSIX real-time Working Group of IEEE for the past 12 years, and is deeply involved in the maintenance of the approved standards, and the development of new extensions, in particular those that will make it possible to have more flexible scheduling policies available to applications.

The ARTIST2 NoE, and particularly the cluster “Adaptive Real-Time”, is a privileged forum for elaborating new extensions for flexible scheduling, adapting them to the needs of embedded real-time applications, and influencing operating system vendors to implement the new services.

An example of this, already organized by ARTIST2 partners, is the Advanced Real-Time Operating System Services workshop (ARTOSS), held in July 2003. ARTIST2 will organize similar events, and the conclusions from the discussions will be submitted by University of Cantabria to the POSIX Working Group.

We have been working on two parts of the standard:

IEEE Std 1003.13-2003. IEEE Standard for Information Technology—Standardized Application Environment Profile— POSIX Realtime and Embedded Application Support (AEP)

IEEE Std 1003.26-2003. IEEE Stf for Information Technology - Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX). Part 26: Device Control Application Program Interface (API) [C Language]

Expected next Major Release Date Approximately 2008

Technical Area(s) which it Addresses Real-time and embedded operating systems

Very Succinct Description of the Standard Itself POSIX is the standardization of the UNIX operating system at the international level. It describes application program interfaces for the operating system services, with the aim of portability at the source code level. In addition to general-purpose services, it contains optional real-time services.

IEEE Std 1003.13-2003 defines four profiles (subsets) of the base standard that are appropriate to specific real-time and embedded application environments. The profiles are for small embedded systems, industrial controllers, large embedded systems, and general-purpose computers with real-time requirements.
IEEE Std 1003.26 is an extension to the base standard defining an API for managing and controlling device drivers from the application.

Technical Gains

Portability of applications at the source code level
Programming model shared across platforms of different sizes
Portability of programmers because of using the same programming model.

Previous revisions/versions on which it is based IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 IEEE Std 1003.13-1998

Name of the Relevant Standardisation Body IEEE, ISO/IEC

Main Leader or Contact Person within this Standardisation body, and his/her role Joseph Gwinn (Raytheon), Chair of the POSIX System Services working Group.

Industrial Domains Impacted Real-time and embedded operating systems vendors and users.

Industrial Gains Portability of applications gives technological advantages of being able to support the same product for multiple platforms, and evolve to new software and hardware platforms very easily.

Name of the your Team Universidad de Cantabria

ARTIST Teams' Roles and Responsibilities in the Standard Definition Member of the POSIX Real-Time System Services Working Group Technical editor of the IEEE 1003.13 Std Technical editor of the IEEE 1003.26 Std Technical editor of the IEEE 1003.1j Std Technical editor of the IEEE 1003.1d Std

Main other ARTIST participants in the standardisation process Indirect contributions of the partners of the Adaptive Real-Time Action through the group of the University of Cantabria

Main other ARTIST participants in the standardisation process Very large number of participants (see the list in the actual standards)

UML Profile for Schedulability, Performance, and Time

Bruno Bouyssounouse — 2006-07-10T15:07:52Z

UPM was involved in the review process of this standard

Expected next major release date This standard is finished

Technical area(s) which it addresses Adaptive Real-Time Modelling and Components Hard Real-Time

Short description of the standard UML extensions for the description of real-time properties in UML architectures and application of real-time analysis approaches

Technical gains This standard includes notations for the temporal characterization of UML models. These extension are integrated with real-time analysis solutions such as Rate Monotonic Analysis.

Previous revisions/versions on which it is based OMG Standard March 2005 (standard ended), Final adopted submission October 2003.

Name of the relevant standardization body OMG (Object Management Group)

Main leader or contact person within this standardisation body, and his/her role Alan Moore

Industrial domains impacted UML Modelling tools vendors, and specially the real-time oriented modelling tools Model-based real-time software development in general.

Industrial gains This standard provides solutions to integrate real-time concepts in UML models. It includes notations to standardize the application of real-time technologies in UML. Several tool vendors provide support of this UML profile.

Name of the Artist2 Team Technical University of Madrid

Responsibilities in the standard definition Review

Main other ARTIST participants CEA

Main other non-ARTIST participants Submitters: ARTiSAN Software, I-Logix, Ind., Rational Software Corp., Telelogic AB, TimeSys Corporation, Tri-Pacific Software

Official Specification Document The official specification document is here.

Ada Programming Language

Bruno Bouyssounouse — 2006-07-10T13:52:57Z

ARTIST2 participant Alan Burns, from the University of York, is member of the “ISO Ada Standardisation body WG9”, and is chair of one of its subgroups (HRG - concerned with the use of Ada in high integrity applications). He is also a member of the Ada Rapporteur Group, which is responsible for maintaining and developing the Ada standard.

ARTIST2 participant Andy Wellings, from the University of York is a member of the Ada Technical Interpretation Committee, which is responsible for maintaining and developing the RTSJ.

Expected next major release date Jan 2006

Technical area(s) which it addresses Many, but includes flexible scheduling

Short Description of the Standard An ISO standard for the Ada language

Technical Gains

A number of new features have been added to the language to make it more expressive in terms of its real-time features.
Control of resource usage and dispatching has been enhanced.
The type model has been extended to increase support for software engineering in general.

Previous revisions/versions on which it is based Ada 95

Name of the relevant standardisation body ISO Industrial domains impacted High integrity domain Industrial gains Including into the standard of the Ravenscr profile for deterministic concurrency with a safety critical language

Name of the team WG9

Responsibilities in the standard definition One of the 12 or so active members of ARG (a subcommittee of WG9 - which is itself an ISO committee).

Main other non-ARTIST participants in the standardisation process Sorry too many to list, but IBM and AdaCore

RTSS

Gerhard Fohler, Giorgio Buttazzo, Lothar Thiele — 2006-07-05T14:44:33Z

The Real-Time Systems Symposium (RTSS) provides a forum for the presentation of high-quality, original research covering all aspects of real-time systems design, analysis, implementation, evaluation, and case-studies. RTSS'06 continues the trend of making RTSS an expansive and inclusive symposium, looking to embrace new and emerging areas of real-time systems research.

Access it online!

30. Real Time Systems

2006-07-04T08:11:07Z

The journal Real-Time Systems publishes papers that concentrate on real-time computing principles and applications, which may be research papers, invited papers, project reports and case studies, standards and corresponding proposals for general discussion, and a partitioned tutorial on real-time systems as a continuing series. Much of the work in building sophisticated, modern real-time systems is interdisciplinary in nature and is often found scattered throughout the primary literature.

Real-Time Systems provides a single-source coverage of the state of the art in this exciting and expanding field. The editorial board, the writers and the readers of the journal are drawn from all parts of the world, from industry, and from academia.

Papers published in Real-Time Systems cover, among others, the following topics: requirements engineering, specification and verification techniques, design methods and tools, programming languages, operating systems, scheduling algorithms, architecture, hardware and interfacing, dependability and safety, distributed and other novel architectures, wired and wireless communications, wireless sensor systems, distributed databases, artificial intelligence techniques, expert systems, and application case studies. Applications are found in command and control systems, process control, automated manufacturing, flight control, avionics, space avionics and defense systems], shipborne systems, vision and robotics, pervasive and ubiquitous computing, and in an abundance of embedded systems.

See it online!