Open Access

Modelling approaches have to satisfy certain criteria in order to sufficiently encompass the characteristics of dependable heterogenous multi- and many-core system architectures. This work-in-progress paper gives an overview of modern modelling approaches and their related research projects, particularly those regarding domain specific architecture description languages, as well as of the specific challenges of dependable systems and heterogenous multi- and many-core designs, i.e. scheduling techniques for real-time requirements and concerns regarding functional safety. Furthermore, an ongoing research effort in order to identify a set of criteria for evaluating the eligibility of modelling approaches for the task of adequately representing these systems and their specific characteristics is presented.

Dieser Bericht entstand auf Initiative der Studierenden des 2020 neu gegründeten Masterstudiengangs „Elektro- und Informationstechnik (MEI)“, die an der Pflichtlehrveranstaltung „Forschungsmethoden und Seminar (FMS)“ im Sommersemester 2021 teilnahmen. Diese Lehrveranstaltung hat das Ziel, systematisch an das wissenschaftliche Arbeiten, speziell die Wissenschaftskommunikation, heranzuführen. Daher war geeignete Literatur zu einem individuellen Thema zu recherchieren, Veröffentlichungen auf ihre Relevanz hin zu beurteilen und letztendlich eine eigene Ausarbeitung basierend auf der Literaturrecherche zu erarbeiten und diese in einem Vortrag zu präsentieren. Parallel dazu erfolgte im Theorieteil die entsprechende Hinführung zu den verschiedenen Elementen der Wissenschaftskommunikation: • Bedeutung der Wissenschaftskommunikation für die Arbeit der Ingenieure in Forschung und Entwicklung • Literaturrecherche, Suchmaschinen, Sichtung und Analyse vorhandener Publikationen, Bewertung der Qualität aufgefundener Fachliteratur, Auswahl geeigneter Materialien für die eigene Arbeit • Aufbereitung und Darstellung der recherchierten technischer Inhalte in Form einer seitenanzahlbegrenzten wissenschaftlichen Ausarbeitung • Einhalten formaler Randbedingungen bzgl. Strukturierung, einschl. Bildnachweise und Zitationsstile • Peer-review-Prozess bei wertschätzender Beurteilung der Leistung anderer • Publikumsangepasstes Aufbereiten komplexer fachlicher Inhalte mit hochschulöffentlicher Präsentation der Ergebnisse • Führen mündlicher wissenschaftlicher Diskurse Nachdem die Masterstudierenden in der Regel über noch keine eigene wissenschaftliche Forschungserfahrung bzw. -inhalte verfügen, lag der wählbare Schwerpunkt der Literatursuche auf der Bearbeitung von vorgegeben aktuellen technischen oder gesellschaftspolitischen Forschungsthemen.

Modern cyber-physical systems, such as autonomous vehicles, advanced driver assistance systems, automation systems and battery management systems, result in extended communication requirements regarding the reliability and the availability. The Controller Area Network (CAN) is a broadcast-based protocol which is still used as a standard for serial communication between individual microcontrollers due to its reliability and low power consumption. In addition, it provides mechanisms for detecting transmission errors and retransmitting messages in the event of an error. The enhancement CAN Flexible Data-Rate (CAN FD) offers increased data rates and transmission rates in order to meet the data throughput requirements. In this paper, the mechanisms for reliable data transmission in a CAN FD network are analyzed. To improve reliability, a second identical CAN-FD network is added to the system, using the additional CAN interface already available on common microcontrollers. The redundant communication network is examined in terms of failure rates and the mean time to failure. The reliability over the operation time is calculated for the single and the redundant version of the CAN FD network using the failure rate limits of the ASIL levels.

In the recent years the development trends for computing platforms moved to multicore systems. Associated with this trend, feature sizes decreased with each new hardware generation and consequently led to a rise of transient and permanent error frequency in memory and CPUs. In this context, researchers presented several approaches which exploit the inherent redundancy of multicore platforms to provide fault tolerance. We present a discussion of fault tolerance approaches based on redundancy at different levels of architecture regarding theirsphereofreplication,performanceaswellaserrordetection and recovery capability.

Future embedded systems demand increasingly more computation performance, which can only be provided by exploiting parallelism in real-time applications. Due to scheduling and scalability issues, parallelism still is an open issue especially in hard real-time systems. In this work-in-progress paper, we describe and discuss a hierarchical gang-scheduling based approach to address the scalability issue. We use gang scheduling to schedule tasks consisting of multiple kernel level threads. The execution budget provided by the kernel level threads is used for scheduling of user level threads using a lightweight threading library running in user space. Further, the first steps towards an implementation in the realtime operating system kernel Erika OS are described and possible benefits and risks of this approach are shown.