TITLE: Cyber-physical systems: Opportunities, challenges and some solutions SPEAKER: Prof. Peter Marwedel (TU Dortmund, Germany) WHEN: Thursday, February 13th, 11:00 am WHERE: IDSIA Meeting room - Galleria 1, Manno ABSTRACT: The term "cyber-physical systems" characterizes the integration of information and communication technologies (ICT) with their physical environment. The term sheds a light on the increasing connectivity of ICT and its physical environment. This connectivity results in a huge potential for the development of intelligent systems in a large set of industrial sectors. These sectors comprise industrial automation, traffic, consumer devices, the smart grid, the health sector, urban living and computer-based analysis in science and engineering. A multitude of goals can be supported in this way, e.g., the availability of higher standards of living, higher efficiency of many processes, the generation of knowledge and safety for the society. However, the realization of this integration implies manifold challenges. In this talk, we will provide a brief summary of some of the opportunities, challenges and partial solutions. In particular, we will present techniques for the reconciliation of compilers and timing analysis. Also, we will demonstrate techniques for the reduction of the energy consumption of ICT. Finally, we will briefly present tradeoffs involving reliability. BIO: Dr. Peter Marwedel studied physics at the University of Kiel, Germany. He received his PhD in that subject in 1974. As a post-doc, he published some of the first papers on high-level synthesis and retargetable compilation in the context of the MIMOLA hardware description language. In 1987, his habilitation thesis in computer science (a thesis required for becoming a professor) was accepted. Since 1989, he is holding a chair for computer engineering and embedded systems at the computer science department of TU Dortmund. He is also chairing ICD, a local spin-off of TU Dortmund. His research interests include design automation for embedded systems, in particular the generation of efficient embedded software. Focus is on energy efficiency and timing predictability. Since 2001, Dr. Marwedel published papers on energy-efficient software and compiler-supported use of scratchpad memories. He is the author of one of the few textbooks on embedded systems. Since 2011, he is the vice-chair of the collaborative research center SFB 876, aiming at resource-efficient analysis of large data sets. Dr. Marwedel is an IEEE Fellow.