Potential impact
PREDATOR specifically addresses the Strategic Objective ICT-2007.3.3: Embedded Systems Design of the Work Programme 2007 for Information and Communication Technologies Research within the 7th Research Framework Programme of the European Union.
The expected results of PREDATOR are twofold:
- Direct benefits resulting in a dramatic reduction of validation costs of safety-critical embedded systems development
- Indirect benefits resulting in better efficiency of European industrial systems based on innovative embedded systems functions as well as improved safety and energy efficiency
The industry developing safety-critical embedded systems is severely suffering from design practices leading to unpredictable system behaviour. The determination of guarantees for nonfunctional requirements is postponed to a late design stage, and then often fails because of design decisions taken earlier. Establishing a methodology reconciling predictability and efficiency will have a very strong impact on systems design and implementation practice in industry.
PREDATOR will pave the way to new generic architectures similar to the introduction of RISC architectures by not abstracting away the computer organisation layer. PREDATOR will also attempt to exert a strong influence on operating systems or programming language design. In the longer term, PREDATOR will have a high impact in the embedded system industry, improving reliability and reducing hardware costs.
The PREDATOR partners will develop methods for system design that increase system development productivity aiming in particular at predictable system properties. The methodology aims at building and verifying heterogeneous embedded systems, i.e. embedded systems from components with different characteristics. Adaptivity will be offered on the basis of reliably determined performance bounds. A key role plays the predictability of extra-functional properties such as timing and energy performance. Tool chains for designing embedded systems as offered by the participating academic and SME partners will be integrated to respond to the needs of industry.
PREDATOR will advance the European Research Area in the field of embedded systems, the expected impact of the project being:
- Increased productivity of system development by at least one order of magnitude by reducing the verification efforts, which consumes nearly 80% of the total development effort
- Improved competitiveness of European companies that rely on the design and integration of embedded systems in their products by reducing costs and time to market
- Stimulation of European high-tech tool providers that offer innovative solutions and tools for embedded systems design
- Reinforced European scientific and technological leadership in the engineering of realtime embedded systems
Europe is traditionally in the leading scientific position with respect to code-level timing analysis and real-time scheduling analysis, with active research groups in Mälardalen/Uppsala, Vienna, York, Saarbrücken, Rennes, Toulouse, Bologna, Braunschweig, Zurich, Cantabria, Linköping, and a few more. The PREDATOR partners are in close contact to all these groups and are actively cooperating and synchronising the research work (e.g. via the ARTIST2 Network of Excellence).
PREDATOR will help to manifest Europe’s leading scientific and technological leadership in the timing analysis domain. Timing analysis is a key factor to engineering of complex realtime systems. This is crucial for European industries. Europe is currently leading in verification technology for resource-constrained systems. PREDATOR will help to retain and enforce the European leadership.