CIS 4930/6930

Principles of Cyber-Physical
Systems

Instructor: Hao Zheng

What are Embedded Systems?
Computers whose job is not primarily information processing,
but rather is interacting (sensing and control) with physical
processes

Examples:
 Automotive controllers

 Avionics

 Medical devices

 Industrial control

 Infrastructure

 Transportation

 Energy management and conservation

A broader view is that of cyber-physical systems (CPS)

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Embedded Everywhere!

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What are Embedded Systems?

Computational
 but not first-and-foremost a computer
Integral with physical processes
 sensors, actuators, physical dynamics
Reactive
 at the speed of the environment (timing matters!)
Heterogeneous
 hardware/software/networks, mixed architectures
Networked
 concurrent, distributed, dynamic

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Differences Between Embedded Systems and
General-Purpose Computation:

Time matters
 “as fast as possible” is not good enough
Concurrency is intrinsic
 it’s not an illusion (as in time sharing), and
 it’s not (necessarily) about exploiting parallelism
Processor requirements can be specialized
 predictable, repeatable timing
 support for common operations (e.g. FIR filters)
 need for specialized data types (fixed point, bit vectors)
Programs need to run (essentially) forever
 memory usage has to be bounded (no leaks!!)
 rebooting is not acceptable

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Other Characteristics of Embedded Sys.

• Dependable
• Reliability R(t) = probability of system working correctly
provided that is was working at t=0
• Maintainability M(d) = probability of system working
correctly d time units after error occurred.
• Availability A(t): probability of system working at time t
• Safety: no harm to be caused
• Security: confidential and authentic communication
• Making the system dependable must not be an
after-thought, it must be considered from the very
beginning
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Other Characteristics of Embedded Sys.

• Efficiency
• Code-size efficient (especially for systems on a chip)
• Run-time efficient
• Weight efficient
• Cost efficient
• Energy efficient

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Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS)
 CPS are the tight integration of and coordination
between computation with physical processes.
 CPS include embedded systems and networks to
monitor and control physical processes.
 Future CPS will be much stronger in
 Adaptability, autonomy, efficiency, functionality, reliability,
safety, and usability.
 The challenge is the interactions between the
embedded computers and the physical processes.
 Need to understand the joint dynamics of HW, SW,
networks and physical processes.
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Applications

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Medical Devices

Emerging direction: Cell phone

based medical devices for
affordable healthcare
e.g. “Telemicroscopy” project at
Berkeley

Robotic surgery

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Medical Devices: Assisted Living

 For example:
• Artificial eye: several
approaches, e.g.:
• Camera attached to
glasses; computer worn at
belt; output directly
connected to the brain,
“pioneering work by William
Dobelle”. Previously at
[www.dobelle.com]

 Translation into sound; claiming much better

resolution.
[http://www.seeingwithsound.com/etumble.htm]

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Medical Devices: Assisted Living (cont’d)

IEEE Spectrum, 1/2012

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Infrastructures: Smart buildings

Examples
 Integrated cooling, lightning,
room reservation, emergency
handling, communication
 Goal: zero-net energy buildings
 Expected contribution to fight
against global warming

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Transportation: Avionics

 Flight control systems,

 Autonomous-collision avoidance,
 pilot information systems,
 power supply system,
 flap control system,
 entertainment system,
 …
Dependability is of outmost
importance.

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Transportation: Automotive electronics

About 80 computers (electronic control units, ECUs)

in a premium car today:
 engine control, transmission, anti-lock brakes, electronic
suspension, parking assistance, climate control, audio
system, “body electronics” (seat belt, etc.), display and
instrument panel, etc.
 linked together by CAN bus (today), FlexRay (tomorrow)
with up to 2km of wiring.
 growing fraction of development costs, manufacturing
costs, and fuel consumption.

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Transportation: DARPA Grand Challenge

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Google Self-Drive Cars

http://youtu.be/PgTc4Np9YX4

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Typical Embedded System Architecture

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Structure of CPS

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Where CPS Differs from the traditional
embedded systems problem:

The traditional embedded systems problem:

Embedded software is software on small computers. The technical
problem is one of optimization (coping with limited resources and
extracting performance).

The CPS problem:

Computation and networking integrated with physical processes.
The technical problem is managing dynamics, time, and
concurrency in networked cyber + physical systems.

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A Key Challenge on the Cyber Side:
Real-Time Software
Correct execution of a program in C, C#,
Java, Haskell, etc. has nothing to do with how
long it takes to do anything. All our
computation and networking abstractions are
built on this premise.

Timing of programs is not repeatable,

except at very coarse granularity.

Programmers have to step outside the

programming abstractions to specify
timing behavior.

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Techniques Exploiting the
Fact that Time is Irrelevant

Programming languages
Virtual memory
Caches
Dynamic dispatch
Speculative execution
Power management (voltage scaling)
Memory management (garbage collection)
Just-in-time (JIT) compilation
Multitasking (threads and processes)
Component technologies (OO design)
Networking (TCP)
…

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What about “Real Time”?

What if you need “absolutely positively

on time”?

Today, most embedded software

engineers write code, build your
system, and test for timing.

The resulting system is brittle,

meaning the slight changes in the
operating conditions (or in the design
of the system) can cause big changes
in behavior. For example, replacing
the processor with a faster one can
cause real-time failures.
Prioritize and Pray!

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A Story

A “fly-by-wire” aircraft, expected to be made for 50

years, requires a 50-year stockpile of the hardware
components that execute the software.

All must be made from the same mask set on the

same production line. Even a slight change or
“improvement” might affect timing and require the
software to be re-certified.

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Abstraction Layers
The purpose for an
abstraction is to
hide details of the
implementation
below and provide
a platform for
design from above.

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Abstraction Layers

Every abstraction
layer has failed for
time-sensitive
applications.

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Is the problem
intrinsic in the
technology?

Electronics technology
delivers highly repeatable and
precise timing…
20.000 MHz (± 100 ppm)

… and the overlaying software

abstractions discard it.

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CPS is Multidisciplinary

Computer Science: System Theory:

Carefully abstracts the Deals directly with

physical world physical quantities

Cyber Physical Systems:

Computational +
Physical

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CPS is at boundary of EE and CS

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Traditionally, embedded systems has been an industrial
(not academic) problem, principally about resource
limitations.

 Small memory
 Small data word sizes
 Relatively slow clocks

When these are the key problems, emphasize efficiency:

 write software at a low level (in assembly code or C)
 avoid operating systems with a rich suite of services
 develop specialized computer architectures:
 programmable DSPs
 network processors
 develop specialized networks
 Can, FlexRay, TTP/C, MOST, etc.

This is how embedded systems have been designed for 30 years

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Content of an Embedded Systems Course

Traditional focus CPS focus

• Hardware interfacing • Modeling

• Interrupts • Timing

• Memory systems • Dynamics

• Imperative logic
• C programming
• Concurrency
• Assembly language
• Verification
• FPGA design
• …
• RTOS design

•…

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Main Challenge

Models for the physical world and for computation diverge.

 Physical: continuous time, differential equations

 Computational: discrete time, logic

There is a huge cultural gap.

Physical system models must be viewed as semantic

frameworks, and theories of computation must be viewed as
alternative ways of talking about dynamics.

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What this course is about

A principled, scientific approach to modeling and

analysis of embedded systems

Not about specific designs

Ad hoc designs can be fun, but it can also be very

painful when things go wrong…

Focus on model-based design for

embedded systems
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Course Theme: Model-Based Design

• A principled, scientific approach to designing and

implementing embedded systems.
• Modeling of cyber and physical processes
• Analyze the model.
• Synthesize the cyber control for the physical processes.
• MBD allows rapid prototyping, system verification,
and design reuse.
• Reduce the development cost.
• Speed up development process.

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Modeling, Design, Analysis

Modeling is the process of

gaining a deeper understanding
of a system through imitation.
Models specify what a system does.
Design is the structured creation of
artifacts. It specifies how a system does
what it does. This includes optimization.
Analysis is the process of gaining a deeper understanding
of a system through dissection.
It specifies why a system does what it does
(or fails to do what a model says it should do).

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What is Modeling?

Developing insight about a system, process, or

artifact through imitation.

A model is the artifact that imitates the system,

process, or artifact of interest.
•If a model = good abstraction of a physical sys.

•Assertions about models => confidence in the

realization of the system.

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More on Model-Based Design

1. Create a mathematical model of all the parts of the

embedded system
 Physical world
 Control system
 Software environment
 Hardware platform
 Network
 Sensors and actuators
2. Construct the implementation from the model
 Construction may be automated, like a compiler
 More commonly, portions are automatically constructed

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Topics we will study

Model-Based Design
 Represent systems based on mathematical models
System Analysis
 Verify that your model & implementation will meet a spec.
Concurrency
 Run multiple tasks correctly and efficiently
Real-Time
 Ensuring that tasks finish on time
Joint discrete-continuous dynamics
 Consider CPS as a whole

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Read Chapter 1 of Lee & Seshia

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