Design of Dependable Real-Time Systems in the Time-Triggered Architecture

Hermann Kopetz
Vienna University of Technology, Austria

Headlines for the tutorial

• Hard real-time versus soft real-time
• composability
• the role of the communication system
• the time-triggered architecture
• the TTP/C system bus and the TTP/A sensor bus
• temporal firewalls
• a two level design methodology
• fault hypothesis
• fault-tolerance strategies
• importance of replica determinism
• system validation
• issues in certification

Abstract
The cost-effective development of flexible dependable automation systems based on commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) mass-produced hardware and software components is a great challenge in the industrial automation and embedded system market. For dependable embedded real-time systems the available components, the systems-on-a-chip (SOCs), will be determined by the mass-market of dependable automotive electronics. In 1999 the world's leading semiconductor manufacturer of automotive chips, Motorola, has decided to develop and mass-produce SOCs for high-dependability real-time applications in cars according to the time-triggered architecture (TTA). This seminar will focus on the systematic design of dependable real-time systems in the time-triggered architecture.

Hermann Kopetz is professor for Real-Time Systems at the Vienna University of Technology, Austria. Dr. Kopetz' research interests focus at the intersection of real-time systems, fault-tolerant systems, and distributed systems. He is the chief architect of the Time-Triggered Protocol (TTP) for distributed fault-tolerant real-time systems. In the last few years, Dr. Kopetz and his research group work in the field of automotive electronics. He is presently involved in two large European ESPRIT projects where his pioneering work on time-triggered architectures is being transferred to the automotive industry. Dr. Kopetz has published more than 100 papers and patents in the fields real-time computing, distributed computing and fault tolerance. Dr. Kopetz is a Fellow of the IEEE and a member of Austrian Academy of Science.