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Computer engineering is a rapidly evolving discipline. How should we teach it to our students? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the increasing size of integrated circuits (ICs), their design and optimization phases (i.e., computer-aided design, CAD) grow increasingly complex. At design time, a large design space needs to be explored to find an implementation that fulfills all specifications and then optimizes metrics like energy, area, delay, reliability, etc. At run time, a large configuration space needs to be searched to find the best set of parameters (e.g., voltage/frequency) to further optimize the system. Both spaces are infeasible for exhaustive search typically leading to heuristic optimization algorithms that find some tradeoff between design quality and computational overhead. Machine learning (ML) can build powerful models that have successfully been employed in related domains. In this survey, we categorize how ML may be used and is used for design-time and run-time optimization and exploration strategies of ICs. A metastudy of published techniques unveils areas in CAD that are well explored and underexplored with ML, as well as trends in the employed ML algorithms. We present a comprehensive categorization and summary of the state of the art on ML for CAD. Finally, we summarize the remaining challenges and promising open research directions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This roundtable explores the ethical and safety implications of the rapidly evolving technology of autonomous vehicles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Heterogeneous computing is widely used at all levels of computing. However, heterogeneity presents challenges. This article considers research issues in heterogeneous cyberphysical system design, including interoperability, physical modeling, models of computation, selfawareness and adaptation, architecture, and scheduling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we present an industry perspective on key drivers for autonomous navigation, with a particular focus on resiliency and behavior assurance. We provide a brief survey of current deployed mobile autonomous systems and their capabilities (with a primary focus on the air domain but including other domains—underwater, ground, space, and surface—as well). We discuss techniques that are currently used for achieving resiliency and assurance in autonomous navigation, pointing out some of the shortcomings of these techniques. We describe techniques under development in the industry that aims to overcome these shortcomings by combining emerging approaches to resilient behavior with assured autonomous behavior constructs to yield reliable and mission-effective systems necessary to operate successfully in dynamic and adversarial environments. We briefly discuss ongoing efforts to develop multidomain standards that are designed to be applicable across these disparate vehicle domains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the prevalence of computer systems, we must change our approaches by ensuring that civilians and companies can become responsible for much of their own cyberdefense. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Safety and security have traditionally been distinct problems in engineering and computer science. The introduction of computing elements to create cyber-physical systems (CPSs) has opened up a vast new range of potential problems that do not always show up on the radar of traditional engineers. Security, in contrast, is traditionally viewed as a data or communications security problem to be handled by computer scientists and/or computer engineers. Advances in CPSs and the Internet-of-Things (IoT) requires us to take a unified view of safety and security. This paper defines a safety/security threat model for CPSs and IoT systems and surveys emerging techniques which improve the safety and security of CPSs and IoT systems. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper presents a service-oriented development methodology for wide-area cyber–physical systems (CPS) such as smart grid and vehicular networks. Unlike the traditional task-based development approach from the domains of automotive and avionics, the proposed service-oriented development methodology inherently enables disruption-free incremental system deployment and reconfiguration that are fundamental requirements for handling the “always-online” nature of emerging wide-area CPS application domains such as smart grid and vehicular networks. The proposed service-oriented CPS development methodology extends the traditional service-oriented computing (SOC) paradigm for handling hard real-time CPS aspects by introducing resource-aware service deployment and quality-of-service (QoS)-aware service operation phases. The proposed CPS development methodology also supports a streamlined formal interface between the traditional computer-aided feedback controller design environments and SOC paradigm. The paper utilizes a simulation-based smart grid case study to illustrate the advantages of the proposed methodology for developing wide-area cyber–physical systems with improved safety and security characteristics. The paper also identifies a set of technological requirements for the proposed service-oriented CPS development methodology that should guide future research in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Editor's notes: [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Numerical dynamic range analysis combines with architectural simulation to help designers explore algorithmic and architectural tradeoffs that can meet embedded computer vision's demand for precision and high-memory bandwidth. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The articles in this special section focus on the development of autonomous systems. This theme issue on computing for autonomy presents responsive and reliable computing for assured autonomy. Autonomous systems have emerged as a key technology for a wide range of use cases. They can be used to inspect remote equipment, deliver packages, and transport people. Types of autonomous vehicles include those that operate on the ground, under the ocean, in the air, and in space. An autonomous system may include multiple vehicles. Vehicles may operate in formation or in swarms to perform a task. They may also cooperate to avoid collisions and traffic jams. Computing for autonomy clearly requires support for artificial intelligence and the large computational load that applications imply. These systems must also satisfy several types of nonfunctional requirements. Assured autonomy requires real-time responsiveness. Real-time operation is not only necessary for correct and efficient operation but also is a requirement for the safe operation of autonomous systems across many application domains. Safety is fundamental to the acceptance [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Internet of Things provides exciting new capabilities as well as an alternative model for semiconductors--the deployment of vast numbers of small chips-but its success will require solving new VLSI design challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This video is set up to answer the questions about nutrition and aging most frequently asked by long-term-care staff members. It provides a good overview of basic nutrient requirements and [...]

When implementing digital signal processing (DSP) applications onto multiprocessor systems, one significant problem in the viewpoints of performance is the memory wall. In this paper, to help alleviate the memory wall problem, we propose a novel, high-performance buffer mapping policy for SDF-represented DSP applications on bus-based multiprocessor systems that support the shared-memory programming model. The proposed policy exploits the bank concurrency of the DRAM main memory system according to the analysis of hierarchical parallelism. Energy consumption is also a critical parameter, especially in battery-based embedded computing systems. In this paper, we apply a synchronization back-off scheme on the top of the proposed high-performance buffer mapping policy to reduce energy consumption. The energy saving is attained by minimizing the number of non-essential synchronization transactions. We measure throughput and energy consumption on both synthetic and real benchmarks. The simulation results show that the proposed buffer mapping policy is very useful in terms of performance, especially in memory-intensive applications where the total execution time of computational tasks is relatively small compared to that of memory operations. In addition, the proposed synchronization back-off scheme provides a reduction in the number of synchronization transactions without degrading performance, which results in system energy saving. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article proposes a novel approach to cryptosystem design to prevent power analysis attacks. Such attacks infer program behavior by continuously monitoring the power supply current going into the processor core. They form an important class of security attacks. Our approach is based on dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS), which hides processor state to make it harder for an attacker to gain access to a secure system. Three designs are studied to test the efficacy of the DVFS method against power analysis attacks. The advanced realization of our cryptosystem is presented which achieves enough high power and time trace entropies to block various kinds of power analysis attacks in the DES algorithm. We observed 27% energy reduction and 16% time overhead in these algorithms. Finally, DVFS hardness analysis is presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present an analysis of the relationship between input images and energy consumption in error tolerant image processing. Under aggressive voltage scaling, the output image quality of image processing depends on input images for two reasons: 1) error tolerance among images is naturally disparate in terms of perceptual image quality assessment, and 2) the error rate under aggressive voltage scaling varies by input image types. Based on both effects, the supply voltage can be optimized for a given quality requirement so as to achieve ultralow power/energy dissipation. Our analysis demonstrates the significance of the accurate delay estimation, which depends on not only combinational inputs but also the previous state of the logic. We present a new sequential model for accurate error estimation. Based on the model, our experimental results demonstrate that different input image types lead to very different output quality. We also present the effect of process variation on the relationship between input image and output quality. The dependence of energy consumption on input images provides a new perspective for low-power multimedia and image processing system design. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Electronics systems for modern vehicles must be designed to meet stringent requirements on real-time performance, safety, power consumption, and security. Hardware/ software codesign techniques allow system designers to create platforms that can both meet those requirements and evolve as components and system requirements evolve. Design methodologies have evolved that allow systems-of-systems to be built from subsystems that are themselves embedded computing systems. Software performance is a key metric in the design of these systems. A number of methods-of-methods for the analysis of worst case execution time have been developed. More recently, we have developed new methods for software performance analysis based on design of experiments. Formal methods can be used to verify system properties. Systems must be architected to maintain their integrity in the face of attacks from the Internet. All of these techniques build upon generic hardware/software codesign techniques but with significant adaptations to the technical and economic context of vehicle design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we describe a distributed, peer-to-peer gesture recognition system along with a software architecture modeling technique and authority control protocol for ubiquitous cameras. This system performs gesture recognition in real time by combining imagery from multiple cameras without using a central server. We propose a system architecture that uses a network of inexpensive cameras to perform in-network video processing. A methodology for transforming well-designed single-node algorithm to distributed system is also proposed. Applications for ubiquitous cameras can be modeled as the composition of a finite-state machine of the system, functional services, and middleware. A service-oriented software architecture is proposed to dynamically reconfigure services when system state changes. By exchanging data and control messages between neighboring sensors, each node can maintain broader view of the environment with integrated video-processing results. Our prototype system is built on Windows machines, and uses standard video cameras as sensors and local network as a communication channel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the wake of several high-profile embedded-software failures and scandals, we have a responsibility to ensure that the software artifacts we design meet high standards and to reassure users that embedded systems are reliable, safe, and secure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our clients simply want from us exactly what my father and I wanted and what I believe we all want - to be seen and heard for who we are, to be acknowledged for the hard work we do as human beings on this earth, to be met exactly where we are and not turned into what someone else wants us to be for any reason, and to be given the support we need to save ourselves. It is within this safe space of acceptance, respect, and love, a sacred space really, that we heal and grow. Regardless of technique or modality, professional orientation or theoretical grounding, this is the very least we can do for our clients and the very best we can give them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deep Neural Network (DNN) systems tend to produce overconfident or uncalibrated outputs. This poses problems for active sensor systems that have a DNN module as the main feedback controller. In this paper, we study a closed-loop feedback smart camera from the lens of uncertainty estimation. The uncertainty of the task output is used to characterize and facilitate the feedback operation. The DNN uncertainty in the feedback system is estimated and characterized using both sampling and non-sampling based methods. In addition, we propose a closed-loop control that incorporates uncertainty information when providing feedback. We show two modes of control, one that prioritizes false positives and one that prioritizes false negatives, and a hybrid approach combining the two. We apply the uncertainty-driven control to the tasks of object detection, object tracking, and action detection. The hybrid system improves object detection and tracking accuracy on the CAMEL dataset by 1.1% each respectively. For the action detection task, the hybrid approach improves accuracy by 1.4%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cyber-physical systems are no longer a sideline for computing—they are a core concern for computer scientists and engineers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special issue is devoted to the safety and security issues presented by cyber–physical systems (CPSs). CPSs use cyber software/hardware to perform real-time control on physical systems. Such systems are widely used in aerospace and automotive, medical, industrial, and critical infrastructure applications. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Editor's note:Due to the high density requirement for embedded memories, such memories are highly vulnerable to process variation–induced failures. A conservative design approach can largely affect memory density and access performance. This article analyzes variation effects in SRAM and presents low-cost, adaptive postsilicon repair mechanisms.—Swarup Bhunia, Case Western Reserve University [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]