Embedded Systems and Software Validation

Roychoudhury offers readers practical debugging and validation techniques for the entire life cycle of embedded systems design.

Modern embedded systems are a part of every modern electronic device, ranging from toys to traffic lights to nuclear power plant controllers. These processors help run factories, manage weapons systems, and enable the worldwide flow of information, products, and people. Unlike other computer systems such as those that operate personal computers, embedded systems must typically run error-free for years or even decades with little or no opportunity to reboot the system or fix problems. In addition, they require high performance, low cost, and low power consumption. Such systems typically consist of a heterogeneous collection of processors, specialized memory subsystems, and partially programmable or fixed-function components. This heterogeneity, coupled with issues such as hardware/software partitioning, mapping, and scheduling, leads to a large number of design possibilities, making performance debugging and validation of such systems a difficult problem and an imperative issue. Roychoudhury guides readers through a host of debugging and verification methods critical to providing reliable software and systems applications. All the major abstraction levels of embedded systems design are covered. Readers will find practical information including:

• Complete coverage of the major abstraction levels, from software analysis and microarchitectural modeling to modeling of resource sharing and communication at the system level.
• Integration of formal validation techniques for hardware/software with debugging and validation of embedded system design flows.

Real-world case studies to answer the questions: Does a design meet its requirements? If not, then which parts of the system are responsible for the violation? Once these are identified, then how should the design be suitably modified?

About the Author

Abhik Roychoudhury received his M.S. and Ph.D. in Computer Science from the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1997 and 2000, respectively. His research has focused on formal verification and analysis methods for system design, with focus on embedded software and systems. In these areas, his research group has been involved in building practical program analysis and software productivity tools that enhance software quality as well as programmer productivity. Two meaningful examples of such endeavors are the JSlice dynamic analysis tool for Java program debugging, and the Chronos static analysis tool for ensuring time-predictable execution of embedded software. His awards include a 2008 IBM Faculty Award. Since 2001, Abhik has been at the School of Computing in the National University of Singapore, where he is currently an Associate Professor.