Towards a European master programme on global software engineering

This paper presents a European Master programme on global software engineering (SE), being put forward by four leading institutions from Sweden, UK, Netherlands and Italy. The Global SE European Master (GSEEM) programme aims to provide students with an excellence in SE based on sound theoretical foundations and practical experience, as well as prepare them to participate in global development of complex and large software systems. GSEEM has been designed with three noteworthy aspects: 1) Three specialization profiles in which the consortium excels: Software Architecting, Real-time Embedded Systems Engineering, and Web Systems and Services Engineering. 2) Two market-driven routes: "professional" to work as professionals, and "scientific" to continue the education towards research degrees. 3) An innovative concept of "shared modules", delivered together by multiple institutions. Four types of shared modules are foreseen: "parallel" twin modules which run remotely between universities, "shifted" modules which teach SE concepts incrementally with shifts in study locations and timeline ,"complementary" modules in which complementary SE concepts are taught in parallel through shared projects, and "common" modules which share the presentations and the project. The profiles realize "integrated knowledge" by complementing partial knowledge available at partner institutions. The paper explains how GSEEM achieves the objectives of educating global software engineers

Exact Speedup Factors and Sub-Optimality for Non-Preemptive Scheduling

Fixed priority scheduling is used in many real-time systems; however, both preemptive and non-preemptive variants (FP-P and FP-NP) are known to be sub-optimal when compared to an optimal uniprocessor scheduling algorithm such as preemptive earliest deadline first (EDF-P). In this paper, we investigate the sub-optimality of fixed priority non-preemptive scheduling. Specifically, we derive the exact processor speed-up factor required to guarantee the feasibility under FP-NP (i.e. schedulability assuming an optimal priority assignment) of any task set that is feasible under EDF-P. As a consequence of this work, we also derive a lower bound on the sub-optimality of non-preemptive EDF (EDF-NP). As this lower bound matches a recently published upper bound for the same quantity, it closes the exact sub-optimality for EDF-NP. It is known that neither preemptive, nor non-preemptive fixed priority scheduling dominates the other, in other words, there are task sets that are feasible on a processor of unit speed under FP-P that are not feasible under FP-NP and vice-versa. Hence comparing these two algorithms, there are non-trivial speedup factors in both directions. We derive the exact speed-up factor required to guarantee the FP-NP feasibility of any FP-P feasible task set. Further, we derive the exact speed-up factor required to guarantee FP-P feasibility of any constrained-deadline FP-NP feasible task set

Probabilistic Guarantees for Fault-Tolerant Real-Time Systems

Hard real-time systems are usually required to provide an absolute guarantee that all tasks will execute by their deadlines. In this paper we address fault tolerant hard realtime systems, and introduce the notion of a probabilistic guarantee. Schedulability analysis is used together with sensitivity analysis to establish the maximum fault frequency that a system can tolerate. The fault model is then used to derive a probability (likelihood) that, during the lifetime of the system, faults will not arrive faster than this maximum rate. The framework presented is a general one that can accommodate transient `software' faults, tolerated by recovery blocks or exception handling; or transient `hardware' faults dealt with by state restoration and re-execution. Key Words: Real-Time, Scheduling, Probabilistic Guarantees, Fault Model. 1 Introduction Scheduling work in hard real-time systems is traditionally dominated by the notion of absolute guarantee. Static analysis is used to determine that..

Error handling algorithm and probabilistic analysis under fault for CAN-based steer-by-wire system

This paper proposes an efficient way to handle fault in controller area network (CAN)-based networked control system (NCS). A fault in a bus line of CAN will induce a data error which will result in data dropout or time delay, and subsequently may lead to performance degradation or system instability. A strategy to handle fault occurrence in CAN bus is proposed to properly analyze the effect of the fault to CAN-based NCS performance. The fault occurrences are modeled based on fault interarrival time, fault bursts' duration, and Poisson law. Using fault and messages' attributes, response time analysis (RTA) is performed and the probability of control message missing its deadline is calculated. Utilizing the new error handling algorithm to replace the native error handling of CAN, the probability of a control message missing its deadline can be translated into the probability of data dropout for control message. This methodology is evaluated using steer-by-wire system of vehicle to analyze the effect of fault occurrences in CAN. It is found that the proposed error handling mechanism has resulted in better NCS performance and the range of data dropout probability for control message also could be obtained, which serves as crucial input for NCS controller design