Section: Research Program

Modeling and control techniques for autonomic computing

The main objective of Ctrl-A translates into a number of scientific challenges, the most important of these are:

• (i) programming language support, on the two facets of model-oriented languages, based on automata [6], and of domain specific languages, following e.g., a component-based approach [5], [1] or related to rule-based or HMI languages ;

• (ii) design methods for reconfiguration controller design in computing systems, proposing generic systems architectures and models based on transition systems [3], [8], classical continuous control or controlled stochastic systems.

  We adopt a strategy of constant experimental identification of needs and validation of proposals, in application domains like middleware platforms for Cloud systems [7], multi-core HPC architectures [11], Dynamic Partial Reconfiguration in FPGA-based hardware [2] and the IoT and smart environments [4].

Achieving the goals of Ctrl-A requires multidisciplinarity and expertise from several domains. The expertise in Autonomic Computing and programming languages is covered internally by members of the Ctrl-A team. On the side of theoretical aspects of control, we have active external collaborations with researchers specialized in Control Theory, in the domain of Discrete Event Systems as well as in classical, continuous control. Additionally, an important requirement for our research to have impact is to have access to concrete, real-world computing systems requiring reconfiguration control. We target autonomic computing at different scales, in embedded systems or in cloud infrastructures, which are traditionally different domains. This is addressed by external collaborations, with experts in either hardware or software platforms, who are generally missing our competences on model-based control of reconfigurations.