Embedded Made Easy -- Rethinking Embedded + Cloud Software Development (WIP)

TL;DR

This paper proposes a unified language and runtime system to simplify development, deployment, and debugging of edge and cloud applications, enabling seamless scaling and integrated diagnostics.

Contribution

It introduces a vision for a retargetable, single-language stack that supports deployment across heterogeneous edge and cloud environments with enhanced debugging capabilities.

Findings

Conceptual framework for a unified edge-cloud runtime

Design of integrated diagnostics and debugging tools

Potential for seamless application scaling across systems

Abstract

The process of engineering and deploying applications in the edge/embedded space is massively complicated by the non-homogeneous nature of the software stack and the complexity of diagnostics & debugging. Often different languages and runtimes are used for different components of the system forcing designers to, irrevocably, make decisions about what components run on the periphery and what components run in the cloud. Further complications arise when handling and diagnosing failures in the system. Multiple stacks and, often, limited support for debugging complicate the already difficult task of analyzing distributed applications. This paper presents a work-in-progress vision for a unified language and runtime system that allows applications to scale seamlessly across the edge and cloud. Using a single language and runtime, applications can be developed and tested in a single environment, and then deployed to any component of the system -- from resource limited controllers to large cloud servers. Further, we outline how this retargetable stack can provide integrated diagnostics and debugging tools that allow developers to record and replay distributed events locally for analysis and debugging.