TITLE: Physical Real-Time Computing
by Lothar Thiele
ABSTRACT: An important class of real-time systems interact with, sense, and respond to the world around them. Much of the research effort is related to understanding interference between concurrent activities due to shared resources, minimizing and limiting interference through hardware and software designs, and reducing resource usage while providing guarantees. On the other hand, this class of real-time systems is typically deeply embedded in a physical environment. The challenges for providing guaranteed responses within certain time constraints go beyond the typical keywords such as non-deterministic and time-varying processing requirements, interference on computational, communication and storage components.
The talk will focus on models and methods for providing timing guarantees for systems that are subject to interference from the physical environment in which they are embedded. Examples include non-deterministic communication behavior in low-power networks, changes in ambient temperature, and sustainable energy supply through energy harvesting. We will discuss modeling approaches, analysis, and design methods to limit or even avoid these types of interference while still providing usable low-power systems. Finally, we will discuss limitations and practical experiences with the described design principles. Special emphasis will be placed on their use in environmental monitoring in high alpine areas and automatic control.
BIOGRAPHY: Lothar Thiele joined ETH Zurich, Switzerland, as a full Professor of Computer Engineering, in 1994. His research interests include models, methods and software tools for the design of embedded real-time systems, internet of things, cyber physical systems, sensor networks, embedded software and bioinspired optimization techniques.
In 1986 he received the “Dissertation Award” of the Technical University of Munich, in 1987, the “Outstanding Young Author Award” of the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society, in 1988, the Browder J. Thompson Memorial Award of the IEEE, and in 2000-2001, the “IBM Faculty Partnership Award”. In 2004, he joined the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. In 2005, he was the recipient of the Honorary Blaise Pascal Chair of University Leiden, The Netherlands. Since 2010, he is a member of the Academia Europaea. In 2013, he joined the National Research Council of the Swiss National Science Foundation SNF. Lothar Thiele received the “EDAA Lifetime Achievement Award” in 2015. Since 2017, Lothar Thiele is Associate Vice President of ETH for Digital Transformation. Lothar Thiele has been elected IFIP Fellow by the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) as part of its first cohort of fellows in 2019.