In IMMORTAL, a consortium of leading European academic and industrial players combined their expertise in developing an integrated, cross-layer modelling based tool framework for fault management, verification and reliable design of dependable cyber-physical systems.
Recently, the world has seen emerging Cyber-Physical System (CPS) modelling frameworks addressing various design aspects such as control, security, verification and validation. However, there have been no considerations for reliability and automated debug (i.e. design error localisation and correction) aspects. The main aim of IMMORTAL was to fill this gap by introducing reliable design and automated system debug into CPS modelling. To reach this aim, the project developed a cross-layer CPS model spanning analogue mixed-signal circuits, hardware architecture, firmware, operating system and application layers. In addition, a holistic fault model for representing fundamentally different error sources in CPSs (design bugs, wear-out and environmental effects) in a uniform manner was proposed. Moreover, IMMORTAL developed a fault management infrastructure on top of the reliable design framework that allows ultra-fast fault detection, isolation and recovery in the emerging many-core based CPS architectures that are expected to be increasingly adopted in the coming years.
As a result, the project served as an enabler for development of dependable CPSs with improved reliability and extended effective life-time, which is a particular concern in emerging nanoelectronics technologies that are becoming increasingly vulnerable to disturbances, ageing and process variations. The tool framework to developed within IMMORTAL was evaluated on a clearly specified real-world use-case of a satellite on-board-computer. However, the results are more general and applicable to many application domains, including avionics, automotive and telecommunication.
