Architecture Exploration for Time-Critical and Cost-Sensitive Distributed Systems

Emerging technologies provide opportunities for the implementation of advanced car features enhancing the safety and the comfort of the driver, but at the same time, the correct implementation of these features imposes new design challenges on electronics, software, and controls designers due to the large number of in-vehicle computers and serial data communications. In this paper, we propose a comprehensive view of methods and tools that support the designers in facing such challenges. We propose an approach for quantitative architecture exploration based on the scoring of the possible alternatives via metrics of interest, and we illustrate some early results with a case study example.