Analyses and architectures for mixed-critical systems: Industry trends and research perspective

Abstract

The ongoing Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) and Internet of Things (IoT) revolution is leading to the ubiquity of applications with realtime requirements. In traditional real-time applications, dedicated and isolated systems were built for each safety-critical functionality, but this paradigm no longer suits emerging applications. The automotive industry is a prime example of a domain that is currently undergoing the radical shift to integrated mixed-criticality systems. A heterogeneous mix of applications with diverse requirements in terms of timing and safety criticality is run on hardware platforms that are increasingly heterogeneous, including specialized hardware accelerators. Examples of such systems are provided in this special session along with reviews of challenges and current research directions in industry. Ways to utilize the performance of application-specific accelerators while maintaining the system's flexibility using runtime reconfiguration are presented. It will benefit university researchers/professors, students, industry professionals, and computing system designers who are interested in working on mixed-critical systems.