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IEEE SYSTEMS JOURNAL
Architectural Considerations for Next
Generation IoT Processors
Vanita Agarwal , Member, IEEE, Rajendrakumar A. Patil , Member, IEEE, and Arunkumar B. Patki
Abstract—Currently, the growth of the first generation Internet
of Things (IoT) system for low-end devices having less memory and
infrastructure is challenged due to the lack of engineering support
in terms of architecture, technology, hardware, privacy, security,
and business. This paper discusses system engineering issues rel-
evant in IoT processors and builds a case for exploring rough set
as an approximate computing technique in next generation IoT
hardware. The proposed approach has a potential of dealing with
inconsistencies arising at layers in hardware infrastructure for IoT
applications with a dominance at cloud and fog processing. The
authors bring out a research direction in IoT as an engineering
discipline with an emphasis on the impact of processor hardware
extension.
Index Terms—Approximate computing, hardware design, incon-
sistency, inconsistent information systems (IIS), indiscernibility, in-
formation gain, Internet of Things (IoT), IoT hardware, missing
attribute, processor design, rough set technique (RST), smart city
project (SCP), very large scale integration (VLSI).
I. INTRODUCTION
NTERNET of Things (IoT) architecture can be visualized as
I a model composed of four layers (application layer, service
support layer, network layer, and device layer) [1]. The network
layer provides relevant control functions for networking, mobil-
ity management, authentication, and transport capabilities. The
service support layer caters to the needs of organized services at
cloud/fog/edge interfaces in an integrated manner by providing
seamless hierarchical reliability, availability, safety, and security
features. These capabilities give rise to inconsistent information
systems (IISs) [2] at every layer and the issues arising out of
machine-to-machine and device-to-device communication. IoT
protocols are inherently light weight type (e.g., 6LoPAN) and
involves automatic (without human intervention) processing of
large volume data sets in real time. The implementation of algo-
rithms for handling IIS using traditional electronic data process-
ing hardware suffers from nonavailability of specific hardware
instructions as a processor architecture support. The situation is
identical to the era when we did not have specific instructions
(such as MMX) at a processor level to handle multimedia re-
sources. The complete emergence of e-learning, YouTube was
Manuscript received February 3, 2018; revised May 25, 2018 and November
9, 2018; accepted December 24, 2018. (Corresponding author: Vanita Agarwal.)
The authors are with the Department of Electronics and Telecommunication,
College of Engineering Pune, Pune 411005, India (e-mail:,vsa.extc@coep.ac.in;
rap.extc@coep.ac.in; abpatki.extc@coep.ac.in).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/JSYST.2018.2890571
1937-9234 © 2018 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
1
possible only after departing from traditional coding application
programming interface (API) methodology to hardware inten-
sive algorithmic methodology in processor building blocks. IoT
infrastructure has been in the same transition phase and it is
necessary to explore this from various perspectives beyond the
routine themes such as business skills, IT skills, technology
extensions, etc.
Before digging deeper into the link that exists between the
processor architecture and its impact on IoT infrastructure, let
us briefly discuss the real-time response as a basic challenge
that leads to a significant departure from API coded software
to hardware instruction set support. The computing hardware
platforms presently deployed are oriented from a numerical
number-crunching perspective. It is in this context that arith-
metic and logic unit (ALU) is the heart of any CPU. While
such limitation was discovered in the past and was substantially
overcome by the digital signal processing community almost
three decades ago by way of introducing a multiplier accumula-
tor (MAC) unit as a building block, it remained unnoticed by a
larger section of technology developers as DSP was catering to a
very small section of end products. Unlike this, IoT has a larger
impact.
The type of security attacks to IoT infrastructure reported [3]
are indicative of the fact that merely continuing with the present
approach is not useful. Furthermore, Meltdown and Spectre flaw
affect all modern processors from Intel, ARM, etc. [4]. The ef-
fect is also felt on fog and edge devices including smart phones
and tablets. Operating systems such as Windows, Linux, Mac
OS, Android, and iOS are exposed to such vulnerabilities. This
is because of a speculative execution present on almost all the
state of the art processors that in turn predict the command
or execution path using privilege kernel memory. In the con-
text of IoT, this will result into security directed victimization,
since most of the IoT operating systems such as mbed, Riot,
Contiki are derived from Linux philosophy. The vulnerabilities
are easily extended to the IoT operating system platforms too.
To overcome these problems on PC and workstations, patches
have been released. However, this is only a transition arrange-
ment unless hardware level solution for processor architecture
is incorporated into edge devices and fog platforms.
The authors, therefore, re-explore the International Telegraph
Union—Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T)
approach as shown in Fig. 1 for assessing information systems
inconsistencies at different layers from IoT hardware perspec-
tive. It is, therefore, necessary to deviate from the number-
crunching perspective of computing hardware and dwell into
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2 IEEE SYSTEMS JOURNAL

TABLE I
VARIOUS HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE SOLUTIONS FOR IOT REFERENCE
MODEL POSSESSING INCONSISTENCIES

Fig. 1. IoT environment establishing the need for eliminating the inconsisten-
cies at layers as hardware infrastructure.

the approximate processing hardware paradigm (on top of con-

ventional ALU).
The authors explore the foundations of IoT Infrastructure with
a specific purpose to:
1) understand the major technology breakthrough that will
be the result of approximate computing as an integral part
of IoT hardware building blocks;
2) develop case study for research direction in IoT as an
engineering discipline;
3) understand the impact of rough set based processor hard-
ware extension;
4) develop computational footprint adaptationals using
rough set technique (RST) [2], [5], [6] (such as RISC
architecture three decades ago).
Table I highlights IoT hardware and software components
with ITU-T layer-wise features and its significance. As IoT
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section II
hardware has no accepted definition, the discussion here en-
discusses the challenges for the IoT community and provides
compasses cloud/fog/edge computing processors and sensor
solutions as well as introduces approximate computing tech-
networks. An emphasis on power/energy consumption there-
nique. Section III presents some case studies where RST could
fore is given by introducing and supporting cognitive comput-
be used to further illustrate our vision of the next generation
ing for IoT and by removing the existing bottlenecks arising out
IoT hardware. Section IV highlights the computational work-
of number-crunching (it needs multiple calculations and makes
load due to IISs in an IoT environment. Section V highlights the
these systems more intensive thereby increasing workload and
existing first generation IoT hardware. Section VI explores the
memory requirements) perspective of computing hardware plat-
next generation IoT hardware. This section discusses the role
forms. The context of approximate computing is introduced us-
and scope of approximate computing and rough set in the next
ing RST-based framework (low end devices [7]). This context
generation IoT hardware. Section VII concludes this paper by
can lead to evolving hardware, which will enhance the merely
establishing the need for solving the problems arising out of the
number-crunching scenario prevailed in the past in the domain
IoT environment using IIS.
of IoT. In addition, the number-crunching based encryption and
crypto policies have to be readdressed in the light of Melt-
II. CHALLENGES AND EMERGING TRENDS
down/Spectre processor flaws.
The current trend of deploying embedded hardware is inad- In spite of several encouraging market forecasts and projec-
equate to address issues arising out of inconsistencies at layers tions, the past decades witnessed a very limited growth in IoT
as hardware infrastructure. The next generation IoT architec- deployment. The variations in the deployment methodologies in
ture, especially the IoT supporting hardware platforms for IoT the IoT-based smart systems are so diverse that 8/16/32 b pro-
data processing have to be inclusive and need to eliminate the cessors such as Arduino, PIC, ARM, and Intel Galileo are shown
bottlenecks of computational processing for dealing with IIS as prospective candidates for processing platforms. This creates
perspective of IoT applications as shown in Fig. 1 and Table I. an impression that it is a distributive network of tiny processors
One such approach uses processor designs with modified in- and completely ignores the issues connected to the deployment
struction sets which are not available in the first generation IoT of large systems and engineering systems such as modeling and
devices based on Raspberry Pi, Intel Galileo, Arduino, or similar simulation for life cycle phases in massive technology of smart
processors [8]. cities, which affect day-to-day life of the people.
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AGARWAL et al.: ARCHITECTURAL CONSIDERATIONS FOR NEXT GENERATION IoT PROCESSORS
Thus, an integrated view toward systems and humans is a
prerequisite for efficient human machine systems for successful
smart city projects. The authors were exploring these issues
from academic and technology view point and it emerged that
the IoT infrastructure was the primary concern. There is a lack
of adequate hardware support. In this context, the developments
on machine learning algorithms by Google and the subsequent
progress achieved were revealed by Google [9] through their
proprietary tensor processing unit (TPU) hardware unit. TPU is
a trend toward approximate computing.
A. Challenges for the IoT Community
Various challenges in achieving characteristics and require-
ments for the IoT community are summarized in the following.
1) Characteristic of IoT Systems:
1) Workload is related to organization, recognition,
mining, search, analytic, and inference. The focus
is diverting from calculating numerically precise
results to correctness, which produces quite good
results to produce an acceptable user experience.
The problem with an IoT System is that today’s
computers are designed to compute precise results
even when it is not necessary.
2) Big data in part is dirty, non-homogeneous, and in-
secure. The associated computer architecture such
as storage, information processing and analysis in
real time of time-series data [10], and possibility
of missing data attributes is a matter of concern.
The problem here is that IT industry is not geared
up for embracing artificial intelligence (AI) through
hardware.
3) The traditional IT cloud and its ecosystem is only
60–70% similar to IoT cloud and its ecosystem.
The seemingly ready IoT cloud can be rendered
almost useless due to the 30–40% difference for
all the applications. The problem here is that the
traditional IT cloud, web, or mobility applications
cloud use much bigger devices with more resources
on the cloud side [11].
4) Information overload due to handling of large
databases is currently suffering from a surplus
amount of irrelevant data [12].
2) Requirement of IoT Systems:
1) Large scope computing implies fractal loading as
against large scale computing. Fractal loading im-
plies the coexistence of different but related things
(data formats) at different levels of scale, opposing
the maximization of the capacity of uniform com-
munication channels dedicated to a single type of
exchange.
2) Information gain is a useful indicator to decide
whether particular data must be available in the
database (for processing/computation) or can it be
partitioned out (for storage and retrieval). This con-
cept can be utilized to reduce the cloud process-
ing computational load and to restore to edge/fog
computing [13]. The problem therefore is that the
3
present software implementation seems to be too
slow (such as theoretical analysis) to use in IoT
applications and needs development of hardware
specific modules.
3) Scalable data analytic and event processing en-
gine are required on the cloud side as well as
the premise/gateways with a variety of SDKs and
communication agents, data caching and bandwidth
management as a different layer and levels of the
hierarchy. The sensor data should be combined to
infer an event (complex event processing—CEP)
and respond to them as quickly as possible. An
RST for detection oriented CEP exists.
4) Power down logic—with the new generation of IoT
things, low capacity (mAH) battery operated sen-
sors are available which are resource constrained.
5) Machine intelligence quotient (MIQ) is a product
specification for IoT system. A fuzzy logic can be
used for MIQ measurements. Standardization is a
prerequisite for successful IoT smart cities.
6) The new in-memory streaming technologies that
change the rate are required for some IoT
applications.
7) Encryption/decryption (AES or DES)—Sensor
level crypto security and/or hardware level crypto
processors should be used to prevent attack at the
edge. The scope of approximate computing us-
ing RSTs is an emerging potential technology be-
cause of the constant use of passwords and cryp-
tographic keys buried in a computer’s kernel is a
real-time probabilistic computation of Fuzzy hash-
ing that facilitates computation of lower approxi-
mation and upper approximation using elementary
set (ES) of the kernel memory snapshot. This con-
text triggered piece wise hashes will be used in
combination with the instruction set of rough set
processor specifically when missing attributes are
generated [14].
In the context of processing the real-time streaming data,
Table II shows the sizes of cache, memory, etc., present in
the latest processors for processing the ever increasing trillions
of data. For the real-time requirement, the data needs to be
processed at fog and edge interface. There is a never ending
requirement of bigger cache and memory for processing tril-
lions of data. Therefore, cache and memory that are installed
today will be “limited” in size after a year. By using bigger size
memory and cache day by day, IoT edge based devices will
become power hungry system. Fig. 2 shows the orthogonality
(neither similarity nor overlap) at the architecture level in IoT
hardware. To achieve the quality attributes in design, implemen-
tation, and deployment; the architecture of processors, sensors,
wireless sensor networks, and power supply systems are dif-
ferent. Merely scaling the existing systems will not serve the
current day issues and/or problems arising out of the character-
istics and requirements of IoT systems. These two issues have
not been addressed adequately.
The high speed processing and/or multicore processing can
never be a solution to seamless implementation at fog/edge
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4 IEEE SYSTEMS JOURNAL
TABLE II
LATEST PROCESSOR SPECIFICATIONS SUCH AS CLOCK SPEED, MEMORY SIZES,
CACHE SIZES, PROCESSOR CORES, AND THERMAL DESIGN POWER
Fig. 2. Orthogonality at architecture level in IoT hardware processors, sensors,
wireless sensor networks, and power supply systems to achieve the quality
attributes in design, implementation, and deployment.
infrastructure in an IoT environment in the light of “Dark Sili-
con” [15] experience. The authors, therefore, explore the context
of approximate computing as a paradigm shift to enhance the
performance of IoT hardware from power/energy consumption
criteria.
It is imperative to understand from the above salient char-
acteristic features of IoT systems that the current practice of
“Installation-Commissioning-Acceptance-Testing” adopted by
industry should be replaced by real-time methodologies. Opti-
mization has to be replaced with AI and cognitive informatics,
which is a completely missing attribute of the present genera-
tion IoT platforms. The market projections of billions of IoT
devices deployed by the end of 2020 can never be fulfilled
since the existing IoT infrastructure does not cater to most of
the requirements depicted in Section II-A. The authors take a
large encompassing view and analyze these ten characteristics
in the context of “number crunching” vis-a-vis “approximate
processing” as illustrated in Fig. 3.
In the absence of dedicated hardware for cognitive load pro-
cessing, we resort to software solutions, which use number-
crunching hardware. Thus, resulting into an unacceptable level
Fig. 3. Challenges in Section II-A grouped as a number-crunching require-
ment vis-a-vis approximate computing requirement.
of throughput, performance, power/energy balance. While there
could be some disagreement on the grouping brought out on
classification, the fact still remains that approximate processing
is emerging as a back bone for IoT computing needs. The au-
thors provide the following similarity to facilitate understanding
of the relevance of approximate processing in IoT. In the past,
the approximate data processing was conceived and effectively
used in multimedia systems (image, video, audio processing)
that clearly led to the development of MPEG activities. Here,
image compression, A to D and D to A audio conversions (ana-
log to digital domain transformations and vice-versa) emerged
as “deviations” from strict number crunching paradigm of the
then computational schemes. However, a more in-depth approx-
imate processing is proposed here using RSTs for IoT applica-
tions to address IIS projected at ITU-T framework. The “real
time” in this context is not continuous in nature, but is “pop-up”
in appearance as and when sensors activate (normally dormant).
Unless supported through hardware support [16], we cannot
address such concerns of ITU-T IISs.
B. Approximate Computing Architecture
Approximate computing has been identified and described
in the recent literature as an alternative information process-
ing methodology at hardware platform level. According to the
researchers from Purdue University [17], a large number of ap-
plications utilize significant computing resources and the spec-
trum ranges from mobile and IoT devices to large scale data
centers. Such applications possess a high degree of intrinsic er-
ror resilience to their computations executed in an approximate
manner. The correctness produces adequate results. It is a com-
putation that returns a possibly inaccurate result rather than a
guaranteed accurate result, for a situation where approximate
result is sufficient.
The second use of the term approximate computing intro-
duced by rough set knowledge processing community is a rep-
resentation of dealing with concept generation to formulate rule
bases for incompletely specified systems. While the Purdue
researcher’s approach promotes error resilient computational
philosophy, we subscribe to an approach of inconsistency in
information systems arising out of data. This use of the term is
more appropriate in the IoT context since most of the IoT data
analytic never assumes error resilient characteristics, especially
in strategic industrial IoT applications.
Architectural considerations such as energy efficient ap-
proaches for IoT applications have been explored in the context
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AGARWAL et al.: ARCHITECTURAL CONSIDERATIONS FOR NEXT GENERATION IoT PROCESSORS
of sensor nodes and enhanced cloud utilization [18]. While these
are significant contributions for heavily dominated sensor-based
IoT infrastructures, the gap exists in the context of uncertain-
ties arising out of the data flow in IoT cloud and fog systems.
While the amount of energy consumed vis-a-vis traffic rate have
been examined, the processing incompetency of the present IoT
CPU/processor hardware still remains an unexplored area. En-
ergy efficient hardware or software and its availability in com-
mon IoT architectures has not been addressed for processor de-
sign in the context of instruction set and support for IoT specific
programming languages. The green perspective of IoT cannot
be restricted only through cosmetic approaches [19] that can
lead to scalability concerns. Thus, the processor level support
is important. It is in this context that the rough set hardware co-
processor is used as approximate computing for dealing with
IoT data analytic using IISs.
To appreciate case studies highlighted in Section III, the re-
searchers emphasize on creating a small footprint for computa-
tion at instruction level. The information processing community
emphasizes on processor with RAM, hard disk, network infras-
tructure, and operating system integration to support hardware.
Whereas, the computational workload emphasizes on reducing
the computational footprint irrespective of the supported RAM,
hard disk, and network infrastructure.
The recent trends are indicators for enriching approximate
computing. Power efficiency is a primary concern of IoT-related
applications, both at the sensor node and on its cloud-computing
counterpart [20]. Symbolic aggregate approximation computing
provides solutions to many challenges associated with current
data mining tasks [21]. While the above recent trends are es-
sentially algorithmic approaches in IoT analytic due to big data,
hardware approach is necessary to have a substantial impact
(large population if sensor clusters are present due to wireless
sensor networks).
III. CASE STUDY
This section discusses some case studies where the RST could
be used to further illustrate our vision of the next generation IoT
hardware. Most of these activities can be undertaken only after
an adequate IoT hardware support is available.
A. Research Directions for IoT
Research in IoT emphasizes on massive scaling, architec-
ture, robustness security, and human in the loop [8], integrating
technological support. It leads to initiatives to
1) extend existing technologies to adapt to IoT environments;
2) model human behavior to incorporate human in the loop
control;
3) major initiative to deploy IoT systems success-
fully.
The first initiative leads to a transition from IT to IoT us-
ing micro controller and embedded processor however serving
a limited purpose to create confidence in prototype develop-
ment. Unless substantiated with impact oriented major mod-
ification, it cannot lead to the targeted growth in IoT sector
which themes around a qualitative change physical systems. The
smart vision has to address challenges to integrate all the three
5
initiatives. The issue of human behavior modeling has to be
addressed as it is not the case of providing human interface
through GUI enriched with multimedia support. The case of
introducing fractal-based support therefore is illustrated in the
context of which data virtualization and image processing are
to be considered.
B. IoT Deployment for Smart City Projects
Data over collection for smart city projects appears to be a
source of victimization. Li et al. propose inclusive cloud ori-
ented security solutions for smart city data [22]. This may be
acceptable at consumer IoT installations but not for industry
because the issues such as tracking location, accessing photos,
and address book are not relevant in industrial environment. As
factory automation by the next generation will be real time fo-
cused, approximate computing oriented fog-based services will
have dominance in industrial IoT.
For smart cities, the concept of focusing on smart communi-
cation to support value added services has been projected [23].
A Web service approach is proposed for urban IoT environment
using CoAP protocols. This study considers processing require-
ment but not cognitive fractal based computational load. Human
behavior is not modeled to support its interface and integration
with image processing. As the road traffic moves, an image as
data virtualization gets generated instead of image processing
because of the inherent limitation in the existing image pro-
cessing technique deployed. ARM cortex R52 is used to exploit
full potential of devices with hyper visors to manage safety
and security. Cortex R52 does not support Lower approxima-
tion LA and Upper approximation UA and similar instructions
(basic concepts of RST [24]) and thus not suitable for reducing
computational footprints.
The current hardware and software technologies do not make
computing image analytic possible for real-time image process-
ing that forces human behavior modeling. Hardware architec-
tural support to compute progression of fractal dimension at
periodic time intervals on data has to be deployed to eliminate
the human. To computer fractals and meeting the real-time re-
quirements, computational load using procedural programming
languages leads to multicore hardware platforms unless resorted
to declarative programming. It is therefore not possible to meet
cognitive computational requirement of IoT deployment. Thus,
there is a basic need to design new hardware architectures. To
facilitate fractal related computation, rough set concepts using
lower approximation LA and upper approximations UA have to
iteratively followed.
Smart city transportation—Fig. 4 shows the evolving plot at
a visualization console for a city transport network in which an
exact position of a bus can be traced, showing its starting to
end destinations with an image evolving over a period of 30–45
min. The visualization console displays real-time sensor data
minimizing the human in the IoT loop. The fractal dimension
of the real-time transport data for different buses needs to be
compared with the fractal dimension of a permanent road struc-
ture, which is a prerequisite for a road transport system and is a
must for one way traffic, enhancing signal waiting time for the
selected routes on specified hours.
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6 IEEE SYSTEMS JOURNAL
Fig. 4. Snapshot of evolving plot of Pune city BRTS network on visualization
console for a period of 1 h from 10:00 to 11:00 A.M. [25].
TABLE III
SAMPLE OF SENSOR DATA FOR A TIME SLOT OF 1 H
Table III shows a sample of sensor data for a time slot of 1 h.
Presently, such computations are only done for academic and
postmortem purposes and do not need the real-time support. The
feasibility of such computations in the IoT sector is hampered
due to unavailability of real-time support from hardware and
architecture. In Table III, there are four conditional attributes.
The use of LA , UA computation at every time stamp 10, 10:10,
10:20, and so on is prerequisite to evolving fractal dimension of
the data shown on visualization console.
The authors intend to refer to such cases such as confronting
violence and vulnerability in the urban century, fractal disease
growth in urban environment, fractal wave wind flow, fractal
traffic congestion network, etc. [3].
C. Edge Computing
Edge devices such as sensors, actuators, and hand-held elec-
tronic gadgets such as smart phones are usually equipped with
interface and connectivity on fog/cloud processing platforms in
wireless communication mode. In the past, issues of the prereq-
uisites of context generation, preservation, and deployment for
remote feedback were examined [26] but they have restrictions.
Packages such as MATLAB cannot be deployed due to lack of
hardware and software including compilers and OS. Thus, con-
cept generation can substitute context generation using LA and
UA approach of RSTs.
Typically, an IoT system is an amalgamation of
cloud/fog/edge computing platforms. The trend to deploy edge
computing as supplementary add on service for cloud offload-
ing is an IT requirement recommending the collaborative edge
computing for a smart city. We extend this argument in the con-
text of large data quantity, low latency, and location awareness
using the approach of generating rules which will be ad hoc in
nature and will work only in real time.
While discussing the case of video analytic for a missing
child, the limitation of uploading camera data on cloud is dis-
cussed from privacy issues, broadband traffic cost and data pro-
cessing overheads for searching a huge quantity of data [13]. To
facilitate on the fly generation of rule basis, the approach of using
reduct and core (a feature of RST) needs to be strengthened for
programmability, data abstraction, service management, and se-
curity considerations. This is possible if hardware support exists
to undertake this computations in real time so that the bandwidth
requirement and latency issues arising out of (to and fro) data
transfer between edge platform and cloud computing platform
can be kept at bare minimum. The issues of memory footprint
and limitations of general multichip machine learning architec-
ture had been examined in the past in the context of CNN and
DNN [27]. A neural network supercomputer has been proposed
for overcoming the capability problems arising out of multichip
configurations. While a neural network supercomputer may be
justified for specialized applications of strategic significance.
This approach is not feasible for IoT infrastructure primarily
due to an impact of IoT as enabling technology for smart cities,
industrial IoT, and similar high volume mass technology ori-
ented applications. This has been discussed at length in the next
section.
IV. COMPUTATIONAL WORKLOAD DUE TO IISS IN
IOT ENVIRONMENT
In the past, big data focused on volume, velocity, and veracity.
The first two have a completely different context in sensor-
based IoT systems than the third one. Rapid machine learning
algorithms were attempted in the past for integrating camera
generated and synthesized data virtualization produced artifacts
but they were limited to cloud-based platforms equipped with
huge amounts of RAM [28]. On the other side, sensor-based
IoT infrastructure is constraint in terms of processing power
and available RAM in which OS level support is minimal on
IoT low end edge devices.
In the moving sensor environments, IoT infrastructure can
result in loss of data communication. The system used either
cloud or fog computing infrastructure. A situation is illustrated
where decision to switch over from cloud computing to fog com-
puting platform, after experiencing the bulk volume of missing
attributes of data fields in information system, was significant.
The IoT system here caters to the needs of passenger buses,
highway truck traffic, and courier fleet. Since transport systems
upload data to the cloud in real time, it results into holes in the
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AGARWAL et al.: ARCHITECTURAL CONSIDERATIONS FOR NEXT GENERATION IoT PROCESSORS 7

databases. The current practices of Platform as a Service (PaaS) TABLE IV

CODE PROFILING RESULTS OF ES AND CS FOR INCONSISTENT
does not handle the real-time data processing and updating the DATA ANALYSIS ON CCS 5.1
actuator feedback subsystem efficiently, as it is not within the
existing (complete software approach) cloud capacity. The de-
signers therefore switch over to fog computing partially. To
cater to the specific workload arising from IISs, a support of co-
processor hardware can be deployed instead of cloud computing
infrastructure. IISs on the cloud can at best support postmortem
analytic as they are more stringent where the duration is in
minutes and seconds.
The electricity grid distribution system using IoT deploys
population of heavy duty transformers of different power capac-
ity, are geographically distributed and contains heterogeneous
mix of units. Distribution transformers are core of such IoT in-
frastructure and failures can result into economic or other losses.
Fault forecasting using IoT is a potential application where sen-
sor and actuator control are restricted significantly by response
time consideration. To handle the IISs, processing at fog and
edge level is crucial and hardware co-processor needs to be pro-
vided. Many platforms such as Intel, ARM, etc., cannot cope
with the processing load arising out of IISs at fog and edge
levels.
In electricity grid distribution transformer fault diagnostic
systems [29], the sources of missing attributes are typically due
to lacuna in data collection process, redundant diagnostic tests,
and unknown and/or corrupted data. The existing trend in data
analytic is to discard such records and restrict the scope to the
consistent-only schema of database snapshot. In IoT data ana- Fig. 5. Normalized frequency count plot for mix of L A –U A and ES–CS.
lytic, characteristics of the original system cannot be preserved
as all the data containing missing attributes is discarded. RSTs
adopt the concept support approach and are dealt with attribute TMS320C6713 (TI DSP processor) development board using
values: for a specific case is lost, is not relevant, and as “ do CCS 5.1 revealed that there is full justification for developing
not care conditions.” The computational load justifies a move hardware co-processor for supporting specific instruction set
from software to co-processor enabled IoT power grid. A need architecture for handling IISs.
for self-healing architectures is discussed in [30] and it is ex- Code profiling of ES and CS algorithm (basic concepts of
pected that the second generation IoT systems can be operative RST [24]) shows the utilization of L1, L2, S1, S2, D1T1, D1T2,
using co-processor hardware support. The scope of hardware D2T1, and D2T2 blocks. Furthermore, the frequency and type
augmented multifunctional comprehensive PaaS adaption will of instructions for inconsistent data analysis using RST are ob-
be restricted if cutting edge co-processors are not available at tained. The code profiling results of ES and crisp set (CS) as in
fog/edge levels to provide mandatory self-healing capacity for Table IV shows that multiplier M blocks are never used for any
high productivity PaaS options [31]. calculation. This may lead to Dark silicon and silicon wastage.
This study suggests approximate computing based on RSTs Fig. 5 shows a normalized frequency count plot of various in-
can facilitate modifications to assembly language, which in structions for LA –UA , ES–CS mixed kind of jobs
turn will promote development of high level programming lan- Bottle neck for several IoT devices data in real-time
guages. The concept of rough set with support for computation response—In an IoT-based environment, there are several bil-
of missing attributes is a step toward architectural hardware lion devices connected. All these devices interact and generate
support toward self-healing IoT systems. RST introduced by long exe files to be accommodated in RAM. This can happen
Professor Z. Pawlak in 1982 [2], [5], [6] is a mathematical and in cloud fog interface and it requires complex instruction set
AI technique for reasoning inconsistent, imprecise, incomplete computing kind of instructions. For edge to fog interface, long
data (properties of IIS) by evaluating equivalence relations be- exe files cannot be run due to a shortage of RAM size. Thus,
tween two sets of data and partitioning it on the basis of concepts instead of a compiler, an interpreter-based approach is used in
generated. For the same, RST does not use MAC kind of cal- edge computing. This is the reason that Python-based Raspberry
culations. The authors had undertaken code profiling work for Pi devices are in rise in IoT where the exe file is never produced
implementing RSTs to explore these issues and specifically in as shown in Table V. Table VI shows a comparison of potential
an environment where in addition to inconsistent information, candidates for RST-based edge device.
there is also an equal amount of digital signal processing com- In the realization of IoT systems, middle ware is described as
putational load [16]. The code profiling exercise undertaken on a key technology software system [32], to be the intermediary
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8 IEEE SYSTEMS JOURNAL
TABLE V
EXAMPLE OF IOT DATA SIZE IN REAL-TIME RESPONSE
TABLE VI
COMPARISON OF HARDWARE PLATFORMS FOR EDGE COMPUTING
between IoT devices and applications. In the open problems
and suggested solutions for IoT service discovery section of IoT
middle ware, the authors have focused on the need of IoT middle
ware design for lightweight device authentication, Denial of
service attacks and end-to-end security. All these methodologies
generate extra computational workload which is of IIS type.
Thus, the need for hardware co-processor support at a device
level is the need for strategic industrial IoT systems.
V. FIRST GENERATION IOT HARDWARE
A cursory look at the current technical literature of IoT
hardware shows that the trend of “Installation-Commissioning-
Acceptance-Testing” is largely prevailing amongst hardware
manufacturers. The availability of low cost, open source hard-
ware platforms such as Arduino like boards (Atmel ATmega
micro controller), the ARM CORTEX processor based boards,
Intel Atom CPU based Edison and Galileo boards provides an
opportunity for building low-cost IoT devices. All these plat-
forms provide a generic sensor fusion support and data process-
ing with wireless support. Linux-based platforms like Raspberry
Pi has high quality/reliability tradeoff. Microchip’s Amazon
web services (AWS IoT) provides mutual authentication. The
NXP’s low power i.MX6 SoloLite with an ARM Cortex-A9
core contains 512 MB of LPDDR2 memory and a 4 GB MMC
flash module [33]. This approach undermines IoT hardware in
IoT infrastructure and is dangerous.
Furthermore, cloud-based IoT services still has many con-
siderations needs to be solved such as secure communication,
access controls for IoT cloud, identifying sensitive data, in-cloud
data protection, cloud architectures, etc. [34].
TABLE VII
STATISTICAL DATA ON NETWORK SECURITY FOR MESSAGE LABS BY
EUROPEAN COMMISSION IN 2007 [42]
VI. NEXT GENERATION IOT HARDWARE
The present big data analytic methods deploy machine learn-
ing methods which are typically based on linear regression,
random forest, and deep learning. The accuracy of most of
the statistical methods for large data sets converge with that
of Euclidean distance [35]. Moreover, these methods also lack
cognitive overloading. While data mining and data warehousing
use noncognitive probabilistic and machine learning algorithms
which are ultimately for consumption by humans; such flexibil-
ity does not exist in IoT where most of things are devices and
human intervention is kept bare minimum. Thus, the producer
and consumer of IoT data are things/devices and hence cognitive
overloading is an important issue when we deal with IISs.
According to Embedded Internet of Things Ecosystem futur-
istic report [36], IoT requires a different set of microprocessors,
drivers, peripherals, batteries, and operating systems than con-
ventional embedded system used in general purpose computing
systems.
The authors have grouped the rough set related concepts in
this section, although the authors preferred the introduction
of rough set terminology and related concepts in the earlier
sections.
A. Information Systems/Tables
An information system I (U, A) where U is a universal set
representing the objects/instances/cases. It is a non-empty finite
set of objects. “A” represents the attribute set, the non-empty fi-
nite set of attributes/features. The rows represent objects, while
the columns represent attribute values belonging to these objects
[37]. Independent variables are called attributes and a dependent
variable is called a decision and is denoted by d. In this paper,
we have utilized RST to approximately compute the threats on
network security as shown in Table VII. This case study is in-
dicative of approximate computing in an IoT environment. RST
is a well-known technique for knowledge discovery and data
mining process [38], [39],[40] and utilizes the approximation
technique.
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AGARWAL et al.: ARCHITECTURAL CONSIDERATIONS FOR NEXT GENERATION IoT PROCESSORS 9

Table VII contains universe U of elements, e.g., months. TABLE VIII

LOWER AND UPPER APPROXIMATION USING ROSE SOFTWARE FOR
Attributes A = spam mail, phishing rates, unique trojans, INCONSISTENT DATA IN TABLE VII
virus, etc. Condition attributes = a1, a2, a3, a4, a5, a6
Decision attribute = d

B. Indiscernibility
Indiscernibility is similarity, where similar objects are col-
lected in a set. The objects are classified into groups based on TABLE IX
the attributes/features. Objects belonging to the same category REDUCTS GENERATED USING ROSE SOFTWARE FOR INCONSISTENT
DATA IN TABLE VII
are considered to be indistinguishable to each other [41].

C. Approximation
In the algebraic space, RST approximates given concept(s)
using lower and upper sets of the concept(s), which are as
follows.
1) Lower approximation and positive region (LA ): The ele-
ments that doubtlessly belong to the set. TABLE X
CORE GENERATED USING ROSE SOFTWARE FOR INCONSISTENT
2) Upper approximation (UA ): The elements that possibly DATA IN TABLE VII
belong to the set.
The boundary region: Boundary region = UA –LA .
Set X is CRISP (Exact with respect to R), if the boundary
region of X is empty.
Set X is ROUGH (Inexact with respect to R), if the boundary TABLE XI
region of X is nonempty. CLASSIFICATION RESULTS USING ROSE SOFTWARE FOR INCONSISTENT
DATA IN TABLE VII

D. Accuracy of Approximation
Accuracy measure α R(X): A measure of how closely the
rough set R is approximating the target set X [37].
α R(X) = UA /LA
If α R(X) = 1, the R-borderline region of X is empty and the
set X is R-definable (i.e., X is crisp with respect to R). If α R(X)
TABLE XII
< 1, the set X has some non-empty R-borderline region and X RULES GENERATION USING ROSE SOFTWARE FOR INCONSISTENT
is R-undefinable (i.e., X is rough with respect to R). DATA IN TABLE VII

E. Rule Generation
Decision rules that are minimal and yet describe the data
accurately are obtained during this process.

F. Reduct and Core

The process of reducing an information system such that the
set of attributes of reduced information system is independent
and no attribute can be eliminated further without losing some
information from the system is called reduct.

G. Results and Discussion

The authors in [42] have used statistical indicators in the
assessment of European policies and RTD on network trust and
security. Even if there is an attack during some part of the day,
the information can be used only for a postmortem kind of
analysis for futuristic understanding.
The authors in this paper use ROSE software for generating
lower and upper approximation, reduct, core, classification,
and rules as shown in Tables VIII–XII, respectively. The RST
analysis in Table IX shows that a2, a3, a4, a5, and a6 are
the reducts obtained. This means that all the attributes are
independent. Rule file also generates the following:
Total number of objects = 10
Total number of attributes = 7
Decision attribute classes = Y, N
The decision rules based on minimal covering algorithm and
extended minimal covering algorithm as shown in Table XII
points out that all the reducts are constant and equally applied
on all the attributes throughout the day. This means that the
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10 IEEE SYSTEMS JOURNAL

network security protocols which should be applied to prevent TABLE XIII

SUMMARY OF ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF
such attacks is same for each attribute. Even such software-based POTENTIAL IOT HARDWARE CANDIDATES
analysis and prevention system is also not available today.
For achieving continuous real-time monitoring and time-
stamp analysis for prevention of attacks, hardware-based on
RST is required.

H. RST for Fault Tolerability in IoT Subsystems

Graceful degradation is a very significant consideration in
IoT infrastructure. Similarly, “smooth recovery” carries a rea-
sonable computational workload. It is necessary to realize that
these fall strictly under the approximate computing domain and
number-crunching operations of ALU can never lead to small
computational footprint.
Incomplete decision tables—Missing attribute values com-
monly exist in the real world data set due to errors in the data
collecting process such as recorded but erased later, redundant
diagnosis tests, unknown data, and so on. Discarding all data
containing the missing attribute values cannot fully preserve the
characteristics of the original system. The following approach
[43] is considered.
1) The attribute value for a specific case lost is denoted by
“?.” If for an attribute “a,” there exists a case “x” such that
ρ(x, a) = ?, then the case is not included in any block.
2) The attribute values that do not matter for the final out-
in decision rule register while arithmetic operation of computing
come are denoted by “*.” Ifρ(x, a) = *, then the case
strength, coverage and certainty factors are performed using
should be included for all specified x values.
arithmetic block.
3) Partial do not care or attribute concept case values are
Unlike Pawlak’s orientation, Muraszkiewicz and Rybinski
denoted by “-.” If ρ(x, a) = -, then the case x should
[46] explored the concept of RSP-based on cellular networks
be included in the block for all specified values where it
(matrix of interconnected elements of same type) and called it
supports the concept automatically.
parallel rough set computer (PRSComp). The trends brought out
4) In the past, fault tolerance typically addressed issues such
by Lewis et al. [47] presented a self-learning hardware model
as hot standby and cold standby on a total configura-
based on cellular concept. Implementation based on UA , LA ,
tion basis. At the upper end system level, the exploitation
core, and reduct calculation on Xilinx board. However, they did
through kernel (Meltdown/Spectre) is prone to these vul-
not explore time complexity, space complexity, and type of data.
nerabilities. If approximate computation directed by ESs
Kanasugi and Matsumoto conceptualized a processor [48],
at the previous time share slice is deployed then such vul-
[49] by computing discernibility matrix. It computed reduct and
nerabilities can be overcome. This is not presently feasible
generated rules using Skowrons discernibility matrix with bi-
due to the absence of instruction level support to introduce
nary attributes. No discussion on space complexity. Time com-
fault tolerance on a select basis.
plexity = O(|U |2 |A|2 ).
Different software such as ROSE, RSES, C, ROSETTTA, and
Some attempts by Sun et al. [50] made use of genetic algo-
MATLAB have been used by the researchers for bench mark-
rithm based attribute reduction system. Tiwari and Kothari [44],
ing several efficient algorithms for reduct and rule generation
[51] have designed rough set co-processor utilizing pipelining
[44]. The software provides flexibility but becomes slow while
between discernibility and reduct block. It supported Max at-
handling large database in IoT environment. The vast computa-
tributes = 65, sharing main memory from host computer, data
tional complexity of big data causes a delay in the optimization
objects = 256, time complexity = O(RA|U |2 ).
process of software implementations. To obtain real-time pro-
On the implementation of Reduct-based approaches, the work
cessing requirements, power, flexibility, fault tolerability, per-
of Jaroslaw et al. [52]–[54] computed short reduct and core
formance goals, hardware implementation of RST is needed.
based on discernibility matrix on FPGA.
It is obvious that power/energy consumption issues find a nat-
The emphasis is on reducing computational footprint irre-
ural solution if RST-based hardware is deployed for IoT data
spective of infrastructure and utilize edge computing for approx-
processing.
imately computing the rules in real time using RST. As discussed
in the earlier sections as well as in Table XIII, for supporting
I. RST Hardware Implementations IoT infrastructure seamless implementation at cloud/fog/edge
In the past, Pawlak [45] gave the first idea of a sample RST platforms, the RST hardware development in the past are in-
processor. Condition and decision attribute of objects are stored adequate. The major thrust for IoT hardware is on real-time
in the decision table. Meaningful rule from the data is computed activities arising out of scheduling of sensor events.
 This article has been accepted for inclusion in a future issue of this journal. Content is final as presented, with the exception of pagination.
AGARWAL et al.: ARCHITECTURAL CONSIDERATIONS FOR NEXT GENERATION IoT PROCESSORS
TABLE XIV
PROPOSED RST HARDWARE DATABASE COMMAND SET
Another focus area of the proposed architecture will be in the
form of extending the support to communication for ITU-T rep-
resentation of IoT structure. The limitation of device-to-device
(D-2-D) communication [55] in the context of authenticating
devices is an ignored aspect because of heterogeneous mix of
devices and network provider. To solve this issue, a software-
based module running on fog platform is proposed which will
make use of lower and upper approximation features to identify
and configure in real-time smaller subsections of D-2-D com-
munication segments. Thus, the existing limitations of hardware
level approach at device level gets partially resolved and allows
us to address the issues arising out of the diverse networks and
networking standards, heterogeneity of devices including unpre-
dictable mobility of devices. Such situation needs RST hardware
that provides instruction set architecture support. Table XIV
shows the proposed RST hardware database command set.
VII. CONCLUSION
While the paper brings out main contribution of this topic for
IoT hardware platforms, it discusses the need for a deviation
from using commercially available off the shelf processors in
the system level digital transformation.
There is a need to strengthen processor design for AI and
cognitive informatics to meet the new challenges. It is totally
missing in the present generation IoT hardware.
In this paper, the authors have carried out a study to justify
that rough set has a potential of reducing computational foot-
print at instruction level by dealing with concept generation to
formulate rule bases. Thus, RST can be considered as a po-
tential direction for approximate computing technique for IoT
applications. Introduction of instruction set for LA , UA at hard-
ware will facilitate efficient computation for IoT from systems
perspective.
Rough set can also provide specialized hardware support for
missing attribute, redundancy isolation for data storage, infor-
mation overloading, energy efficient (portable devices) for the
next generation IoT hardware exploration. Separate hardware
based on RST for IoT needs to work in tune with various oper-
ating systems for IoT devices such as Contiki, RIOT, TinyOS,
FreeRTOS, etc. Driver development feasibility is required for
running these operating systems. The proposed developments in
IoT hardware will lead to strengthening the cognitive computing
support in IoT systems.
11
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors wish to acknowledge the fruitful discussions with
the experts at MeitY, Government of India, for the earlier work
undertaken in pursuing the research and development work in
RSTs which has been useful for a quick start toward this project.
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Vanita Agarwal (M’17) received M.Tech. degree in
microelectronics and VLSI design from the Indian
Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai, India.
She works currently as an Assistant Professor of
electronics and telecommunication with the College
of Engineering Pune, Pune, India. She has around
10 years of experience in teaching and research.
Her areas of interests include microelectronics, VLSI
design and technology, CMOS process integration,
and artificial intelligence. She is currently guiding
M.Tech. students in the related areas.
Rajendrakumar A. Patil (M’10) received the Ph.D.
degree from the Indian Institute of Technology Bom-
bay, Mumbai, India.
He works as an Associate Professor of electronics
and telecommunication with the College of Engineer-
ing Pune, Pune, India. He has around 32 years of
experience in teaching and research. His areas of
interest include communication engineering, next
generation wireless network protocols, cross layer
protocol optimization, co-operative relay networks,
cognitive radio, and performance modeling of net-
works. He is currently guiding M.Tech. and Ph.D. students in the related areas.
Arunkumar B. Patki received the M.Tech. degree
in computer from the Indian Institute of Technology
(IIT) Kharagpur, Kharagpur, India, in 1975.
During 1972–1973, he worked as a faculty with
the Government College of Engineering, Amravati,
India. During 1975–1977, he worked as a Project
Officer with the IIT Kharagpur on hardware/software
R&D projects. In March 1977, he was employed with
Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology
(erstwhile Department of Electronics), Government
of India and superannuated in March 2010 as a Senior
Director/Scientist-G and HoD. He has worked in various capacities on several
projects in the areas of artificial intelligence, software technology parks, etc. He
was instrumental in spearheading post-legislation activities of IT Act, 2000. He
has been trained in VLSI design at Lund University, Lund, Sweden, and Mentor
Graphics, Wilsonville, OR, USA. He is currently guiding B.Tech and M.Tech.
students at COEP. He has authored or coauthored more than 80 international
publications. His current research areas include IoT, soft computing for infor-
mation mining, and evidence based software engineering.
Prof. Patki has been a Referee for IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON RELIABILITY
for more than 20 years. He holds a copyright for Fuzzy Logic Based Operating
Software. He has been a member of Scientists Selection Committees in DRDO.