TORRENTS

General overview

TORRENTS is a cluster («chantier») that federates the activities related to time-oriented embedded systems carried out in research labs in Toulouse (France). It is supported by the RTRA STAE foundation.

TORRENTS aims at proposing a methodology for time-based design of embedded aerospace real-time systems.

Starting point

	Military systems are generally GSLA (globally synchronous locally asynchronous). The advantages are the quick answers to environmental stimuli and an excellent manoeuvrability. The drawbacks are methodological.
	Satellites are generally GSLS (globally synchronous locally synchronous). The advantages are the quick answers to environmental stimuli and a fully deterministic behaviour. The drawbacks are the rigidity of the architectures.
	Civil aircrafts are generally GALS (globally asynchronous locally synchronous). The advantages are the flexibility and the separation of concerns. The drawbacks are the over design of the resources.

Objectives

The TORRENTS objectives are to bring together researchers in the field of architectures, languages and design to propose a new paradigm of multicore architecture and software development integration on the platform driven by the notion of time. So that the system will have a better reactivity (approaching the one of military or satellite solution) and will still remain flexible (easiness to add new component).

Topics

Research areas include:

• time-driven languages
• time-driven OS
• predictable multicore