TCS Excellence in Computer Science (TECS) Week 2006
January 3–7 2006, TRDDC, Pune

The 4th TCS Excellence in Computer Science Week (TECS Week 2006) was held at TRDDC Pune from 3–7 January 2006. Each TECS Week is an advanced workshop on a topic related to computer science and software engineering. TECS Week 2006 was on Embedded Systems, and a panel of internationally renowned experts presented overviews of the latest techniques for developing embedded systems. Special emphasis was laid on formal modeling, analysis and verification of such systems. 

The speakers at TECS Week’06 were Dr. Gérard Berry (Esterel Technologies, France), Professor Werner Damm (University of Oldenburg, Germany), Professor Hermann Kopetz (Technical University of Vienna, Austria), and Professor Kim Larsen (Aalborg University, Denmark).

Dr. Gérard Berry talked about synchronous programming techniques —cycle-based computation and the synchrony hypothesis. He illustrated this idea with several success stories, including the analysis of complex avionic systems. He presented two design environments for embedded systems: SCADE for certified safety-critical embedded software design, widely used in avionics, and Esterel Studio, for hardware design. 

Lecture notes for TECS Week 2006

Reading Material

List of participants

Professor Werner Damm presented a new approach for component-based design in key application domains for embedded systems such as automotive and avionics applications. He addressed a multitude of design requirements and constraints such as real-time, dependability, safety, coordination and functional constraints.

Professor Hermann Kopetz spoke on the requirements of embedded systems, conceptual models, real-time entities and real-time images, temporal accuracy of information, permanence of messages, replica determinism, and the notion of components with interfaces. He presented the design methodology for Time Triggered Architecture (TTA) and validation within the TTA, elaborating the concept of a global clock and how to realise the functionality of the global clock through a series of co-operating local clocks of sub-systems. He also spoke on fault-tolerant systems, the fault hypothesis and various aspects of developing fault-tolerant systems.

Professor Kim Larsen, who is one of the creators of the model-checker UPPAAL, described its use for modeling, simulation, verification, scheduling, testing, and controller synthesis for real-time and embedded systems He presented the concept of timed automata and related techniques to convert the infinite state space of such automata to a finite number of state by defining the notion of region.


Dr. Gérard Berry, who delivered the TRDDC distinguished lecture 2006, being felicitated by Professor Ashok Kolaskar,
Vice-Chancellor of Pune University 

TRDDC Distinguished Lecture
Dr. Gérard Berry

On 6 January 2006, Dr. Gérard Berry gave a TRDDC Distinguished Lecture on Synchronous techniques for software and hardware embedded systems design, verification, and certification. In his address, he presented the synchrony hypothesis and the notion of synchronous programming techniques. He briefly presented more recent extensions of the scope of synchronous design, such as distributed synchronous programs for software and multiclock design for hardware. The event was chaired by Professor Ashok Kolaskar, Vice-Chancellor of Pune University.

Participation and Response
TECS Week 2006 received an enthusiastic response. 60 selected candidates from India and neighboring countries attended the event. The workshop provided a rare opportunity for the leading researchers in different areas of embedded system to come together and exchange views and ideas. The participants were unanimously positive in their feedback.  

Lecture notes for TECS Week 2006 can be downloaded from the TRDDC website at http://www.tcs-trddc.com/tecs/2006-presentations.htm.