Compiler-Support for Robust Multi-core Computing

Abstract. Embedded computing is characterised by the limited availability of computing resources. Further, embedded systems are often used in safety-critical applications with real-time constraints. Thus, the software development has to follow rigorous procedures to minimise the risk of system failures. However, be-sides the inherent application complexities, there is also an increased technology-based complexity due to the shift to concurrent programming of multi-core systems. For such systems it is quite challenging to develop safe and resource-efficient systems. In this paper we give a plea for the need of better software development tools to cope with this challenge. For example, we outline how compilers can help to simplify the writing of fault-tolerant and robust software, which keeps the appli-cation code more compact, comprehensive, and maintainable. We take a rather extreme stand by promoting a functional programming approach. This functional programming paradigm reduces the complexity of program analysis and thus al-lows for more efficient and powerful techniques. We will implement an almost transparent support for robustness within the SAC research compiler, which ac-cepts a C-like functional program as input. Compared to conventional approaches in the field of automatic software-controlled resilience, our functional setting will allow for lower overhead, making the approach interesting for embedded comput-ing as well as for high-performance computing.