EDA for Cyber-Physical Systems
Samarjit Chakraborty
Chair of Real-Time Computer Systems
Technical University of Munich, Germany
Email: samarjit@tum.de
Web: www.rcs.ei.tum.de
Abstract—Over the years, electronic design automation (EDA)
has been moving up the design abstraction ladder. Starting from
automating tasks like placement, floorplanning and routing in
integrated circuits design, EDA now encompasses many system-
level design tasks. However, the next challenge facing the EDA
community is to develop methods and also tools for cyber-physical
systems (CPS) design. For these systems, physical processes, con-
trol algorithms that control these processes, and the computation
and communication platforms on which these control algorithms
are implemented – are all modeled and designed in a tightly
integrated fashion. Currently available EDA methods and tools
are not equipped to handle such integrated modeling and design.
In particular, there is a big disconnect between modeling tools –
like Matlab/Simulink – that are used for modeling plant dynamics
and designing their controllers, and the tools that are used to
design and configure the hardware/software platforms on which
these controllers are eventually implemented. In this extended
abstract we discuss the consequences of this disconnect and
possible ways of addressing this situation.
I. EDA FOR CPS: W HY AND H OW ?
Until the start of the industrial revolution in the mid-1700s
screws were carved from nails with the threading laboriously
filed by hand. As a result of being independently produced,
both the screw and the receiving thread had to be considerably
adjusted when the screw was used. Also, the cost of producing
screws in this manner was so high that they were sold
individually.
While the situation has dramatically improved since then
when it comes to manufacturing screws, for designing complex
hardware/software systems, the same old principles are still
being used today. Such systems comprise multiple layers
at the top layer are high-level models (usually control al-
gorithms), followed by software code generated from these
models, below which is an operating system, which runs on
a hardware platform often consisting of multiple processors
connected by a communication architecture on which tasks
and messages are scheduled. Most often, each of these layers
are designed independently by different groups with com-
pletely different sets of expertise control theorists, compiler
designers, software engineers, operating system designers,
embedded systems designers, computer architects, circuit de-
signers and semiconductor experts. These multiple layers of
abstraction with well-defined interfaces allow these groups to
work independently, partition the entire design problem into
manageable areas of expertise and have led to the phenomenal
advancement in general purpose computing.
But when it comes to more specialized application domains
such as embedded controllers arising as hardware/software
systems in automobiles, industrial automation systems, robots
and a huge variety of other domains these independently
designed layers pose a serious problem. Systems in these
application domains are today often referred to as ”cyber-
physical systems” (CPS). They are characterized by the need
for an integrated modeling (and design) of the dynamics of
the physical systems (or the physical world with which the
systems should interact) and the computational platforms on
which the control algorithms are supposed to run.
However, the current situation is that a vast majority of
control algorithms at the high-level models layer are designed
with idealistic assumptions, such as sensor values being instan-
taneously available to the controller, computing the control law
takes zero (negligible) time, unbounded numerical precision,
and that the underlying computational platform is perfect (free
of any errors). As implementation platforms become more
complex and distributed, these assumptions are increasingly
not true. As a result, a provably optimal controller at the model
level might not perform as desired in a concrete implementa-
tion. This results in significant ex post facto integration, testing
and debugging efforts, as probably was the case prior to the
mid-1700s when driving a screw into a receiving thread. For
complex embedded control systems, it is well known that often
more then 50% of the design effort is spent in integration,
which has additional implications like problems with certifi-
cation (especially for safety-critical systems), overprovisioning
of resources, and inflexible designs.
Hence, one of the main challenges today is to address this
incompatibility between multiple layers of design abstraction.
This results in questions like: Is it possible to develop a
cross-layer design framework that integrates these levels of
abstractions, such that design decisions at one layer are fully
compatible with those taken at a different layer? There are
several more concrete incarnations of this question: Is real
end-to-end certification starting from control algorithms to
semiconductor reliability possible? Given the plant models
and control performance objectives, is it possible to synthesize
the control algorithms along with all the underlying layers
(software code, task and message mappings, scheduling de-
cisions, and hardware protection mechanisms)? If the com-
putational platform and/or the plant change over time, can a
new implementation and/or controller be synthesized on the
fly (which will enable plug-and-play architectures and help
designing autonomous systems)?
To address these questions, there is a need for developing
appropriate electronic design automation (EDA) methods and
tools that bridge the gap between the tasks of (a) modeling
and design of physical systems and their controllers, and
(b) the design of hardware/software platforms that implement
these controllers while faithfully preserving their model-level
semantics. Currently available tools are targeted for either (a)
or (b) and there is no seamless integration between these
two classes of methods and tools. We have been working on
various aspects of this problem.
In particular, we have developed techniques for taking
model-level information into account to better analyze (e.g.,
the timing properties) of software code that is automatically
synthesized from such models [1], [2], [3]. Such code (or
implementation level) information can be used to annotate
the models and better analyze their behavior compared to if
implementation-level information is unavailable. In the oppo-
site direction, we have also studied ways of better incorpo-
rating information on plant and controller dynamics to derive
tighter timing constraints to be be satisfied by an implementa-
tion [4], for example when carrying out schedulability analy-
sis. Suitable architecture design methods and implementation-
level scheduling and resource management algorithms for CPS
have been studied in [5], [6], [7], [8]. The work in [9] have
looked into developing methods for building virtual prototypes
for CPS and resource virtualization techniques [10] to ensure
that applications with mixed criticality levels can be mapped
onto the same execution platform. Cross-layer approaches for
simulation, analysis and verification of control systems and
software have been studied in [11], [12], [13], [14]. In contrast
to approaches where the design of control algorithms and
implementation platforms are mutually divorced, the cross-
layer approaches attempt to take into account a joint design
and analysis. These have been extended to joint synthesis
and optimization of control strategies and their implementa-
tions in [15]. Finally, model-level controller design strategies
that take into account various platform-level resources like
memory, computation, communication, and energy have been
studied in [16], [17], [18], [19], [20]. In spite of this large
volume of work done by us and by other groups, there are
still many open issues in the design of CPS, which makes it
an interesting area to work on, both for the control systems
and also for the embedded systems and the EDA communities.
[10] A. Masrur, S. Drössler, T. Pfeuffer, and S. Chakraborty, “VM-based
real-time services for automotive control applications,” in 16th IEEE
International Conference on Embedded and Real-Time Computing Sys-
tems and Applications (RTCSA), 2010.
[11] M. Broy, S. Chakraborty, D. Goswami, S. Ramesh, M. Satpathy,
S. Resmerita, and W. Pree, “Cross-layer analysis, testing and verification
of automotive control software,” in 11th International Conference on
Embedded Software (EMSOFT), 2011.
[12] S. Chakraborty, M. A. A. Faruque, W. Chang, D. Goswami, M. Wolf, and
Q. Zhu, “Automotive cyber-physical systems: A tutorial introduction,”
IEEE Design & Test, vol. 33, no. 4, pp. 92–108, 2016.
[13] P. Kumar, D. Goswami, S. Chakraborty, A. Annaswamy, K. Lampka, and
L. Thiele, “A hybrid approach to cyber-physical systems verification,”
in Design Automation Conference (DAC), 2012.
[14] S. Steinhorst, M. Kauer, A. Meeuw, S. Narayanaswamy,
M. Lukasiewycz, and S. Chakraborty, “Cyber-physical co-simulation
framework for smart cells in scalable battery packs,” ACM Trans.
Design Autom. Electr. Syst., vol. 21, no. 4, pp. 62:1–62:26, 2016.
[15] D. Roy, L. Zhang, W. Chang, D. Goswami, and S. Chakraborty, “Multi-
objective co-optimization of flexray-based distributed control systems,”
in IEEE Real-Time and Embedded Technology and Applications Sym-
posium (RTAS), 2016.
[16] W. Chang, D. Goswami, S. Chakraborty, L. Ju, C. J. Xue, and S. An-
dalam, “Memory-aware embedded control systems design,” IEEE Trans.
on CAD of Integrated Circuits and Systems, vol. 36, no. 4, pp. 586–599,
2017.
[17] W. Chang and S. Chakraborty, “Resource-aware automotive control
systems design: A cyber-physical systems approach,” Foundations and
Trends in Electronic Design Automation, vol. 10, no. 4, pp. 249–369,
2016.
[18] D. Roy, L. Zhang, W. Chang, and S. Chakraborty, “Automated synthesis
of cyber-physical systems from joint controller/architecture specifica-
tions,” in Forum on Specification and Design Languages (FDL), 2016.
[19] W. Chang, D. Roy, L. Zhang, and S. Chakraborty, “Model-based design
of resource-efficient automotive control software,” in 35th International
Conference on Computer-Aided Design (ICCAD), 2016.
[20] M. Balszun, D. Roy, L. Zhang, W. Chang, and S. Chakraborty, “Effec-
tively utilizing elastic resources in networked control systems,” in 23rd
IEEE International Conference on Embedded and Real-Time Computing
Systems and Applications (RTCSA), 2017.

R EFERENCES
[1] R. Metta, M. Becker, P. Bokil, S. Chakraborty, and R. Venkatesh, “TIC:
a scalable model checking based approach to WCET estimation,” in 17th
ACM SIGPLAN/SIGBED Conference on Languages, Compilers, Tools,
and Theory for Embedded Systems (LCTES), 2016.
[2] L. Ju, B. K. Huynh, S. Chakraborty, and A. Roychoudhury, “Context-
sensitive timing analysis of Esterel programs,” in 46th Design Automa-
tion Conference (DAC), 2009.
[3] L. Ju, B. K. Huynh, A. Roychoudhury, and S. Chakraborty, “Perfor-
mance debugging of Esterel specifications,” Real-Time Systems, vol. 48,
no. 5, pp. 570–600, 2012.
[4] D. Goswami, R. Schneider, and S. Chakraborty, “Relaxing signal delay
constraints in distributed embedded controllers,” IEEE Trans. Contr. Sys.
Techn., vol. 22, no. 6, pp. 2337–2345, 2014.
[5] M. Lukasiewycz, R. Schneider, D. Goswami, and S. Chakraborty, “Mod-
ular scheduling of distributed heterogeneous time-triggered automotive
systems,” in 17th Asia and South Pacific Design Automation Conference
(ASP-DAC), 2012.
[6] M. Glaß, M. Lukasiewycz, J. Teich, U. D. Bordoloi, and S. Chakraborty,
“Designing heterogeneous ECU networks via compact architecture
encoding and hybrid timing analysis,” in 46th Design Automation
Conference (DAC), 2009.
[7] H. Voit, R. Schneider, D. Goswami, A. Annaswamy, and S. Chakraborty,
“Optimizing hierarchical schedules for improved control performance,”
in 5th IEEE International Symposium on Industrial Embedded Systems
(SIES), 2010.
[8] R. Schneider, D. Goswami, A. Masrur, M. Becker, and S. Chakraborty,
“Multi-layered scheduling of mixed-criticality cyber-physical systems,”
Journal of Systems Architecture - Embedded Systems Design, vol. 59,
no. 10-D, pp. 1215–1230, 2013.
[9] J. Oetjens et al., “Safety evaluation of automotive electronics using
virtual prototypes: State of the art and research challenges,” in 51st
Design Automation Conference (DAC), 2014.