Synchronous Control of Reconfiguration in Fractal Component-based Systems -- a Case Study

TL;DR

This paper presents a method for managing dynamic reconfiguration in component-based embedded systems using synchronous languages and formal control synthesis, demonstrated through a case study with the Comanche HTTP server.

Contribution

It introduces an approach to integrate synchronous reconfiguration managers into Fractal systems, utilizing formal tools like Discrete Controller Synthesis for improved control.

Findings

Successful modeling of control problem state space

Implementation of reconfiguration manager in Fractal/Cecilia

Validation through case study on Comanche HTTP server

Abstract

In the context of component-based embedded systems, the management of dynamic reconfiguration in adaptive systems is an increasingly important feature. The Fractal component-based framework, and its industrial instantiation MIND, provide for support for control operations in the lifecycle of components. Nevertheless, the use of complex and integrated architectures make the management of this reconfiguration operations difficult to handle by programmers. To address this issue, we propose to use Synchronous languages, which are a complete approach to the design of reactive systems, based on behavior models in the form of transition systems. Furthermore, the design of closed-loop reactive managers of reconfigurations can benefit from formal tools like Discrete Controller Synthesis. In this paper we describe an approach to concretely integrate synchronous reconfiguration managers in Fractal component-based systems. We describe how to model the state space of the control problem, and how to specify the control objectives. We describe the implementation of the resulting manager with the Fractal/Cecilia programming environment, taking advantage of the Comete distributed middleware. We illustrate and validate it with the case study of the Comanche HTTP server on a multi-core execution platform.