From Electronic Design Automation to Cyber-Physical System Design Automation: A Tale of Platforms and Contracts

This paper reflects on the design challenges posed by cyber-physical systems, what distinguishes cyber-physical system design from large-scale integrated circuit design, and what could be the opportunities for the design automation community. The paper discusses three challenges that touch upon aspects that are unique to cyber-physical systems, namely, devising novel compositional design methodologies, reasoning about the interaction between discrete and continuous models, and dealing with uncertainty. It then summarizes some of the approaches pursued by the research community to tackle these challenges, with the potential of fostering a new generation of methodologies, algorithms, and tools for system design. Central to the paper is a view of platforms and contracts as formal notions that can bridge the emerging area of cyber-physical system design automation with paradigms that have been successful in the field of electronic design automation.