Scientific publications

Tensor Cores (TCUs) are specialized units first introduced by NVIDIA in the Volta microarchitecture in order to accelerate matrix multiplications for deep learning and linear algebra workloads. While these units have proved to be capable of providing significant speedups for specific applications, their programmability remains difficult for the average user.

Automotive software implements different functionalities as multiple control applications sharing common platform resources. Although such applications are often developed independently, the control performance of the resulting system depends on how these applications are integrated. A key integration challenge is to efficiently schedule these applications on shared resources with minimal control performance degradation.

Autonomous vehicles use cyber-physical systems to provide comfort and safety to passengers. Design of safety mechanisms for such systems is hindered by the growing quantity and complexity of SoCs (System-on-a-Chip) and software stacks required for autonomous operation. Our study tackles two challenges: (1) fault handling in an autonomous driving system distributed across multiple processing cores and SoCs, and (2) isolation of multiple software modules consolidated in one SoC.

Over time, software tends to grow more complex, hampering understandability and further development. To reduce accidental complexity, model-based rejuvenation techniques have been proposed. These techniques combine reverse engineering (extracting models) with forward engineering (generating code). Unfortunately, model extraction can be error-prone, and validation can often only be performed at a late stage by testing the generated code.

The focus of this book is on the principles and the use of the system scenario approach. This concept effectively supports the efficient realization of systems in the presence of strong dynamic behavior. The efficiency can be obtained in a multi-dimensional cost space. Realizations can involve the mapping of applications on some type of implementation platforms, but the approach is not limited to this, as the demonstrators in this book illustrate.

The multi-disciplinary nature of the design of cyber-physical systems makes it hard to gain insight in the system behaviour early in the design process. Our aim is to allow the designers to analyse the integration of system components as well as the behaviour of the complete system in an early stage. This is achieved by creating abstract component models and refining them throughout the design process.

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are considered as a promising solution in intravehicle networking to reduce wiring and production costs. This application requires reliable and real-time data delivery, while the network is very dense. The time-slotted channel hopping (TSCH) mode of the IEEE 802.15.4 standard provides a reliable solution for low-power networks through guaranteed medium access and channel diversity.