Embedded Systems
Competency Leader
Embedded systems are computer systems embedded into other products such as mobile phones, game consoles, video players, televisions, medical devices and washing machines. These systems vary greatly in terms of complexity. However, embedded systems have a number of common characteristics including high dependability requirements, interfaces to sensor and actuators, high efficiency requirements, real-time processing constraints, and application-specific design.
In recent years, the number of embedded systems in the marketplace has increase dramatically due to significant reductions in size and costs of microprocessors. In 2010, the number of mobile phones subscriptions worldwide reached 4.6 billion, according to the International Telecommunications Union. At the end of 2009, the number of mobile broadband subscriptions was 800 million. In contrast, the Computer Industry Almanac estimated that there were 1.2 billion PCs in use worldwide at the end of 2008. This trend towards increasing numbers of embedded devices looks set to continue in coming years with the advent of new classes of device such as the iPad and Wireless Sensor Networks.
Lero is active in the area of embedded systems research. Movidius are an Irish-based company developing high performance multi-core processors for video and games acceleration on mobile phones. Lero researcher, Dr David Gregg, TCD, is leading a project to improve compilation for the Movidius processor platform. The project focuses on improving the execution speed of the executable software produced by the compiler. To solve this challenging problem, Lero researchers are bringing together advanced compilation and machine learning methods.
In a related project, Dr Gregg and Dr Gavin Doherty, TCD, are developing tools to assist programmers in understand the performance of software running on embedded multi-core systems. The work aims to assist programmers in eliminating processing bottlenecks and to improve performance by distributing the workload efficiently across the processor resources.
Dr Goetz Botterweck, UL, is leading a Lero team to develop tools and techniques to support the evolution of embedded software-intensive systems designed for families of similar products where the evolution of products is planned towards a long- term horizon. The work will draw on previous research in the areas of model-driven engineering, product-line engineering and formal methods.
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