Early Design Analysis for Robust Cyberphysical Systems Engineering

ABSTRACT:Our vision of a new development paradigm moves software performance analysis from an isolated set of tools that require laborious manual transfer of information among design and analysis tools to an integrated framework in which independent tools share information automatically and seamlessly. This framework provides true automated capability for analyzing the performance of system architectures and designs enabling developers to use decision support data-quickly and economically-during early stages of development. The framework supports the plug and play addition of tools thus making it easily expandable as new design methods, analysis techniques, and other support tools are desired. The current approach to development is an engineering problem that requires fixing performance problems after they occur resulting in unplanned expense and time. Our vision is an innovative solution that enables developers to build performance into their cyberphysical systems design. Phase I work addressed technical challenges in the automated transformation of architecture and design specifications into analysis models. Phase II proposes to create prototypes that implement the key steps in the automated transformation from MDE design models to performance models, and their solution and thus take a significant step toward our vision of the future. The prototypes will establish the validity of our approach.BENEFIT:Developers of real-time embedded and other software systems are moving to Model Driven Engineering using the Unified Modeling Language to define new systems. When developers create models of their software before building it, there is a significant opportunity to provide performance predictions for design and implementation options that they can use to select options that meet performance requirements. This will increase the likelihood that systems will meet their performance requirements upon delivery rather than fail initially and require extensive re-work to correct problems.By automating the translation of software designs to performance models, this framework eliminates the need for laborious and error-prone manual translation. This means that performance defects can be detected and corrected early in the development process when they are easier and less costly to repair. Automated translation of designs to performance models also makes it possible to keep the performance models and design synchronized as the software evolves.It is time to make available to developers proper tools, that are easy to use, to prevent performance problems, particularly for real-time embedded systems software where a performance failure can have disastrous consequences. Phase I resolved technical barriers to automated translation of design to performance models. Phase II will resolve technical implementation issues and develop prototypes that provides the foundation for one or more Phase III commercial products that could be developed relatively quickly and marketed to both the DoD and commercial clients.