Dynamics, Mobility, and System Topology of Hardware/Software Nets Towards a Mathematical Model

Manfred Broy
Technische Universität München, Germany
Fax: +49 (89) 289-28183
broy@informatik.tu-muenchen.de
http://www4.informatik.tu-muenchen.de/~broy/

Abstract

This paper aims at a mathematical foundation of flexible information processing architectures that support the mobility and dynamics of software and hardware systems by a formal model. The model allows aims at the description of mobility of software components (SCs) that are distributed in a conceptual net (software net, SN) and implemented on a physical net (hardware net, HN) of processing hardware units (HUs). This approach covers the following aspects of system modeling:
- a model of information processing nets with a dynamically changing structure of their sets of components and their communication links and services,
- hardware/software codesign by placement mappings between the virtual nets and the physical nets,
- mobility for the migration of software components (SCs) between processing units (HUs).

A special aspect of our model is the formalization of notions such as network transparency and network awareness which are related to the addressing of hardware units all well as software units by software components. Furthermore, we study dynamic nets in the context of hardware/software codesign, both for the conceptual - the software - and the physical - the hardware - net. Based on such a model we are interested in methods that allow us to specify and represent information processing systems consisting of an architecture of mobile software agents that are executed on a net of distributed hardware units.


Last Updated: May 22, 2000 by Elisabetta Ferrando