Swarm Lab Seminar: It's About Time

Seminar: Swarm Lab | March 7 | 12:30-2 p.m. | 490H Cory Hall

Speaker/Performer: Edward A. Lee, UC Berkeley

Sponsor: Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (EECS)

Cyber-physical systems integrate sensors, actuators, computation, and networking with physical systems. The behavior of such systems, most particularly their temporal dynamics, depend on the timing of actions taken by software components. Yet today, nearly all widely used software and networking abstractions lack temporal semantics. The notion of correct execution of a program written in every widely-used programming language and in nearly every processor instruction-set today does not depend on the timing of the execution, and the correctness (vs. performance) of network behavior also does not depend on timing.

This situation is changing. Networking techniques such as precision-time protocols (PTP), Synchronous Ethernet, Time-Triggered Ethernet, Audio Video Bridging (AVB), and various wireless protocols are endowing networks with control over timing. This talk will discuss the implications of this change on the design of cyber-physical system software. It will show through an existence proof that determinate temporal behavior is possible in distributed software systems.

Event Contact: 510-642-6239