Emergent design challenges for embedded systems and paths forward

Modern embedded systems need to cater for several needs depending upon the application domain in which they are deployed. For example, mixed-critically needs to be considered for real-time and safety-critical systems and energy for battery-operated systems. At the same time, many of these systems demand for their reliability and security as well. With electronic systems being used for increasingly varying type of applications, novel challenges have emerged. For example, with the use of embedded systems in increasingly complex applications that execute tasks with varying priorities, mixed-criticality systems present unique challenges to designing reliable systems. The large design space involved in implementing cross-layer reliability in heterogeneous systems, particularly for mixed-critical systems, poses new research problems. Further, malicious security attacks on these systems pose additional extraordinary challenges in the system design. In this paper, we cover both the industry and academia perspectives of the challenges posed by these emergent aspects of system design towards designing high-performance, energy-efficient, reliable and/or secure embedded systems. We also provide our views on paths forward.