ACM TechNews

EU Project MERSA: New Processors to Make Cars More Economical and Planes Safer

Innovations Report (01/04/08)

The European Union's "Multi-Core Execution of Hard Real-Time Applications Supporting Analysability" (MERASA) project is working toward making cars and planes more energy efficient, economical, and safe. Possible improvements include ABS systems with a better performing electronic control unit and control units that allow for optimized fuel consumption, but such improvements require the execution of tasks within a very short interval of time, which is known as "hard real-time constraints." Currently, very few processors exist that can guarantee the necessary execution deadlines. The processors used in high-performing PCs are too expensive and are not suitable for applications in embedded systems such as ABS or engine regulation, and processors currently used in embedded systems have limited performance capabilities and are not able to meet the higher standards of safety and cost-effectiveness that the future will bring. The MERASA project is working to develop embedded processors that use multi-core technology to satisfy hard real-time constraints. "To this end, we at the University of Augsburg will develop new real-time-capable processor structures in collaboration with our colleagues at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center," says University of Augsburg computer scientist Theo Ungerer. "We will implement them prototypically, and at the same time design the corresponding real-time-capable operating system software here in Augsburg." Researchers at Paul Sabatier University and at Rapita Systems in the U.K. will deliver software tools that can calculate the worst-case execution time required to guarantee real-time capability.

http://www.innovations-report.de/html/berichte/informationstechnologie/
bericht-100732.html

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