Architectural Modeling of Embedded Systems (AIMES)

Key words/Classification:

Software Architecture, Architectural Design and Modeling, Architectural Evaluation, Architectural Process, Distributed Systems, Embedded Systems, Performance

Summary

Architectures become increasingly important as a tool for managing the complexity of IT products and their development process. This particularly applies to Embedded Systems with their complex hardware/software interaction, reactive behaviour and their high reliability demands. This research aims at improving the quality of software-intensive Embedded Systems and their development process. After a thorough analysis of the requirements, the following research questions were formulated in co-operation with the industrial partners:

How can the performance (response time, throughput, resource utilisation, etc. of architectures be evaluated? Since Embedded Systems are resource con-strained, answering this question is extremely important. In order to check the feasibility of a particular architecture, it must be decided in an early stage whether the performance requirements can be met or not.
How should architectures be modelled? In order to assess the performance of an architecture, it must first be adequately described. Within the framework of this project a component-oriented approach was chosen since component technology is important for promoting software reuse and for reducing devel-opment costs.
How should architectures be developed, i.e. how should the architecture proc-ess look like? In order to tackle this question, also an interesting paradigm was chosen, namely the use of scenario techniques for improving the quality of architectures. Scenario techniques can be used during the early architecting stages (requirements engineering) as well as during the evaluation of the ar-chitecture. During the preliminary stages, the main goal is to promote the co-operation with and between the interested parties (stakeholders). During the evaluation, the goal is to limit the number of changes induced by the evalua-tion of the architecture) by anticipating them already in the requirements engi-neering phase.

The answers to these three questions will be incorporated in a design method for the architecting of Embedded Systems and a number of supporting tools. This method and the accompanying tools are also an important means for transferring the results of this project to the industry in general, and to the industrial partner in particular.

In order to achieve these results, a number of architecting case studies will be per-formed together with the industrial partner. This research is therefore problem driven and not theoretical. To promote the exchange and consolidation of ideas and to ex-ploit the synergy between industry and academia, the three junior researchers, their industry coaches and their TU/e coaches work closely together. The multi-disciplinary nature of the architecting process is reflected in the individual industrial projects and in the fact that two TU/e faculties are involved.

People

Ph.D. students

E.V. Eskenazi M.Sc.(e.m.eskenazi@tue.nl)
A. Fuykov M.Sc. (a.v.fioukov@tue.nl)
M.T. Ionita M.Sc. (m.t.ionita@tue.nl)

Staff

prof. dr. Dieter K. Hammer (project leader)
dr. Michel R.V. Chaudron
prof. dr. J.F. Groote

Funding

Stichting Technische Wetenschappen (STW)

Industrial partners

Philips Research Laboratory

In cooperation with:

Eindhoven Embedded Systems Institute
Capacity Group Information & Technology Faculty for Technology Management of TU/e

Research papers

[1] Dieter K. Hammer and Michel Chaudron, Towards Component-Based Architecting for Resource Constraint Systems, Proc. 4rth International Software Architecture Workshop (ISAW-4), Limerick, Ireland, June 2000.

[2] Dieter K. Hammer and Michel Chaudron, Component-Based Software Engineering for Resource-Constraint Systems: What are the Needs?, Proc. 6th Int. Workshop on Object-Oriented Real-Time Dependable Systems (WORDS), Rome, January 2001.

[3] M.R.V. Chaudron, E.M. Eskenazi, A.V. Fioukov and D.K. Hammer, A Framework for Formal Component-Based Software Architecting, OOPSLA (ACM Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages and Applications) Workshop on Specification and Verification of Component-Based Systems, Tampa Bay, Florida, USA, October 2001.

[4] E.M. Eskenazi, A.V. Fioukov, D.K. Hammer, M.R.V. Chaudron, Estimation of Static Memory Consumption for Systems Built from Source Code Components, Workshop on Component-Based Software Engineering at the 9^th IEEE Conference and Workshop on Engineering of Computer Based Systems (ECBS) , Lund, Sweden, April 2001.

[5] A.V. Fioukov, E.M. Eskenazi, D.K. Hammer and M.R.V. Chaudron, Evaluation of Static Properties for Component-Based Architectures, component-Based Software Engineering Track of the 28^th Euromicro Conference, Dortmund, Germany, September 2002.

[6] E.M. Eskenazi, A.V. Fioukov, D.K. Hammer, H. Obbink, Performance Prediction for Software Architectures, in Proceedings of PROGRESS 2002 workshop, 2002, Netherlands

[7] Mugurel T. Ionita, Dieter K. Hammer and Henk Obbink, Scenario-Based Software Architecture Evaluation Methods: An Overview, Workshop on Methods and Techniques for Software Architecture Review and Assessment at the International Conference on Software Engineering, Orlando, Florida, USA, May 2002.

[8] Dieter K. Hammer, Component-Based Architecting for Distributed Real-Time Systems: How to achieve composability?, in Mehmet Aksit (ed.), Software Architectures and component Technology, Kluwers 2002.

[9] Mugurel T. Ionita. Dieter K. Hammer, and Henk J. Obbink, "Scenario-Based Software Architecture Evaluation Methods: An Overview", Technical Note, Company Restricted, NatLab, Philips, October 2002- based on the SARA workshop paper presented at ICSE 2002.

[10] E.M. Eskenazi, A.V.Fioukov, D.K.Hammer, H.Obbink, B. Pronk, Analysis and Prediction of Performance for Evolving Architectures, In Proceedings of Workshop on Software Infrastructures for Component-Based Applications on Consumer Devices, Lausanne, Switzerland, September 2002.

[11] Mugurel T. Ionita. Dieter K. Hammer, and Henk Obbink, "Scenario Methods in SoftwareDevelopment: A Survey", Technical Note, Company Restricted, NatLab, Philips, October 2002.

[12] E.M. Eskenazi, A.V.Fioukov, D.K.Hammer, Analysis and Prediction of Performance for Evolving Architectures method: Examples of application in two industrial domains, Philips Research Technical Note PR-TN-2003/00291, May, 2003

[13] E.M. Eskenazi, A.V. Fioukov, D.K. Hammer, H. Obbink, Performance prediction for industrial software with the APPEAR method, in Proceedings of PROGRESS 2003 workshop, October, 2003, Netherlands

[14] E.M. Eskenazi, A.V. Fioukov, and D.K. Hammer, Performance Prediction for Component Compositions, In the proceedings of 7^th CBSE (Component-Based Software Engineering) symposium, adjunct with 26^th ICSE (International Conference on Software Engineering) conference, Edinburgh, Scotland, May 2004.

[15] E.M. Eskenazi, A.V. Fioukov, D.K. Hammer, H.Obbink and B. Pronk, Analysis and Prediction of Performance for Evolving Architectures, Component-Based Software Engineering Track of the 30^th Euromicro Conference, Rennes, France, September 2004.

[16] E.M. Eskenazi, A.V. Fyukov, Quantitative Prediction of Quality Attributes for Component-Based Software Architectures, Dissertation Thesis, Technical University of Eindhoven, 2004.

[17] Pierre America, Dieter Hammer, Mugurel T. Ionita, Henk Obbink, and Eelco Rommes, Scenario-Based Decision Making for Architectural Variability in Product Families, to appear in the Journal of Software Process: Improvement and Practice, 2005.

[18] Mugurel T. Ionita, Pierre America, and Dieter Hammer, A Method for Strategic Scenario-Based Architecting, to appear in the proceedings of the 38th Hawaii International Conference On System Sciences (HICSS-38), January 2005, Hawaii, USA.

[19] Mugurel T. Ionita, Pierre America, Dieter Hammer, Henk Obbink, and Jos Trienekens, A Scenario-driven Approach for Value, Risk and Cost Analysis in System Architecting for Innovation, in the Proceedings of the Fourth Working IEEE/IFIP Conference on Software Architecture 2004 (WICSA'04), Oslo, Norway.

[20] Pierre America, Dieter Hammer, Mugurel T. Ionita, Henk Obbink, and Eelco Rommes, Scenario-Based Decision Making for Architectural Variability in Product Families, to appear in the Proceedings of Software Product Lines Conference 2004 (SPLC'04), Boston, Massachusetts.

[21] Pierre America, Eelco Rommes and Mugurel T. Ionita, Scenario-Based Quality Analysis for Future-Proof Architectures, in the Proceedings of the Philips Software Conference 2004 (PSC'04), The Netherlands.

[22] Mugurel T. Ionita, Pierre America, Henk Obbink and Dieter Hammer, Quantitative Architecture Usability Assessment with Scenarios, in the Proceedings of Workshop Closing the Gaps: Software Engineering and Human-Computer Interaction, at INTERACT 2003, Zurich, Switzerland.

[23] Mugurel T. Ionita, Henk Obbink and Dieter Hammer, Scenario-Based Architecture Evaluation Methods: An overview, for Software Architecture Review and Assessment Workshop Proceedings (SARA), at International Conference on Software Engineering 2002 (ICSE'02), Orlando, Florida.