The institute "Integrated Circuits and Systems Lab (ICS)" is dedicated to research and teaching in the area of embedded systems design and non-standard computer architectures. Originally oriented towards the investigation of design methods of digital hardware components, the area of interest has shifted over the years to issues related to the cooperation of software for programmable standard processors and application specific hardware components, which now make today's efficient systems in information processing possible. Particular emphasis is placed upon embedded systems, which provide the information processing in superordinated interdisciplinary systems (e.g., robots, automotive and avionic transportation means, or cellular phone systems). In contrast to standard applications on off-the-shelf computers (e.g., Windows/Intel personal computers) such tasks must be realized under strict restrictions with respect to execution time as in real time systems, to dependability and safety, and under stringent non-functional constraints regarding, e. g., memory requirements or power consumption, as present in control units for the powertrain in automobiles. Now that whole systems can be put on a single piece of silicon, IC design is as much a software design challenge as it was a hardware design problem. Today's typical system-on-chip (SoC) design includes several standard microcontrollers or even full range processors, memory, dedicated, sometimes reconfigurable subsystems specific to the application, and a complex communications system among them. These chips contain multiprocessor real-time operating systems (RTOS), I/O drivers, and other utilitiy software in addition to the rather complex application specific software. The bunch of software in such new SoC platforms has already resulted in the cost of software design by far exceeding the cost of the pure hardware design in many cases.
Consequently, the main focus of research at ICS is set upon the area of design methods for complex embedded systems. Formal specification models, analysis methods, and implementation of prototypes are currently being investigated within several projects. The current research and development projects may be grouped into one of the following areas:
Requirements of an application specific design of the hardware/software interface within embedded systems architectures is common to most of the mentioned research areas. However, what still remains an obstacle is the efficient hardware/software interface design and implementation. Meanwhile, it is almost clear that an efficient interface engineering is not possible without a sufficient understanding of both worlds architectural principles, methods and tools. ICS provides solutions to this problem.