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Center for Embedded Systems (CES)

The opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed are those of the Center author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

Center Overview

The Center for Embedded Systems (CES) researches the technologies that enable sensing, communications, and computing in everyday things. Its purpose is to advance the field of embedded systems (hardware, software, and architectures), share advancements, and commercialize applications.

CES conducts fundamental research that leads to improvements in personalized health care technologies, consumer electronics, aerospace and avionics, industrial automation, automotive and transportation, and security. CES connects industry with leading faculty members and student researchers on industry-led projects involving embedded systems in algorithms, applications, and architectures to develop products to meet market needs.

An embedded system is an application-specific computing system found inside products such as home appliances, mobile handheld personal systems (e.g., cellphones, health monitors, assistive devices, cameras, electronic games), instrumentation, automobiles, aircraft, missiles, satellites, and nuclear power plants. Embedded systems are distinguished from general-purpose computing systems by their well-defined functionalities and stringent design constraints. Embedded systems encompass all of the four fundamental operational capabilities required to interface with the world at large - sensing, computing, control, and communication - which can now be integrated with single-chip multiprocessors. The ability to combine operational capabilities in this way has opened up new possibilities for application-specific computing.

Universities

Southern Illinois University, Carbondale
Arizona State University

View Center Website

Center Personnel

Spyros Tragoudas
Site Director, SIUC
+1 618 453 7027
spyros@engr.siu.edu

Sarma Vrudhula
Center Director
+1 480 727 4152
Vrudhula@asu.edu

Research Focus

Cyber-physical systems

Model-based formal verification and semi-formal testing.
Model-based synthesis from high-level specifications.
Modeling and simulation.

Embedded multicore architectures and programming

Compilers and architectures for multicore embedded systems.
Design and programming of low-power embedded systems.
Embedded GPU computing for mobile systems.
Power-efficient programmable accelerators.
Soft error resilient system design.

Embedded software systems

Embedded software instrumentation and tools.
Embedded systems for smart grids.
Real-time scheduling.
Scheduling and middleware for multicore-based embedded systems.

Integrated circuit technologies, design, and test

Analog, radio frequency, and mixed-signal circuit design and test.
Emerging semiconductor technologies.
Semiconductors for hostile environments.
Sensor design and manufacturing.
Testing and silicon debug of digital circuits.

Power, energy and thermal-aware design

Energy efficient architectures.
Low-power circuit architectures and design tools.
Performance, power, energy and thermal management for multicore.

Awards

1361926

I/UCRC: Consortium for Embedded Systems - Phase II

The NSF I/UCRC Center for Embedded Systems (CES), was established in 2009 as a collaborative effort of Arizona State University (lead) and Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, to perform the industry relevant research for advancing the field of Embedded Systems (ES) hardware and software. It commenced its fifth year of operation of Phase I in Fall 2013. This proposal is for continuation of the CES as a Phase II I/UCRC. During Phase I, CES organized its research program into six main research topics, (1) Power, Energy and Thermal-Aware Design, (2) Electronic System-level (ESL) Design and Technologies, (3) Embedded Multicore Architectures and Programming, (4) Embedded Software Systems, (5) Cyber-Physical Systems, and (6) Integrated Circuit Technologies, Design, and Test. It has conducted fundamental, industry-relevant research, with 70 industry funded projects from 17 companies, involving average of 12.6 faculty, and 26.4 graduate students per year. Industry sponsored student internships have led 50 permanent, full time positions. In Phase II, CES will build upon the ongoing research efforts and cover new topics within these areas, and possibly re-balance its emphasis based on the existing and new industry partners, and additional faculty. Specifically, new projects are expected involving emerging nanotechnologies such as memristors and spintronic devices; a greater emphasis on energy harvesting techniques for ultra-low power systems; more projects addressing security and trustworthiness; design techniques and tools for guaranteeing provably correct behavior; and new computation paradigms that perform decision making in the presence of uncertainty. The research conducted at CES addresses many of the challenging problems posed by ES, the solutions to which can be applied to other design microelectronic system platforms. The multi-disciplinary nature of the work, and the diversity of the faculty expertise and the industrial partners will result in societal impact of CESs research outcomes. For instance, CES? work on improving the energy efficiency of ES hardware and software, improves and expands battery powered devices for medical applications and consumer electronics, and can also significantly improve the energy efficiency of high performance servers, thereby reducing the damage to the environment. Similarly, CES? work in verification of hybrid systems is being used to ensure that controls systems in automobiles will operate correctly. The same technologies will be used in all sorts of safety critical systems. CES? work on sensors for monitoring bridges is yet another example of the far reaching societal benefits of its research program. CES maintains a popular internship program at ASU for both undergraduate and graduate students. CES graduate students have learned the necessity and importance of explaining and justifying their work to industry members in a public forum with limited time and to an audience with varied backgrounds. This has made them and their work enormously more marketable to industry. Finally, both ASU and SIUC have successfully inducted outstanding female faculty, and CES will continue this effort in Phase II. In Phase II it is expected that at least one new site (Northeastern University) will be added to CES and continued efforts will be made to expand CES? industrial membership following a strong marketing plan that has been developed to achieve set targets. In addition, CES will explore the possibility of adding one or possibly two international sites: the University of Patras (UoP) in Greece, and the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, India. UoP officials are expected to attend the January 2014 meeting of CES, and IISc has expressed interest in exploring ways to become a I/UCRC site, through their recently established Robert Bosch Center for Cyberphysical Systems. Read More >

1361847