ANNUAL REPORT 2012

Acumen+: Core Enabling Technology for Acumen
Acumen+: Core Enabling Technology for Acumen
Walid Taha, Veronica Gaspes, Jerker Bengtsson
Centre for Research on Embedded Systems (CERES),
Halmstad University, Halmstad, Sweden.
Introduction
We are developing a modeling and simulation language design
called Acumen around the thesis that, for a variety of reasons
mathematics is the right formalism for describing many cyberphysical
systems. Two key hypotheses underlying this thesis are
that
• Precise modeling is essential for meaningful experimentation,
analysis, and verification and
• Mathematical models are more amenable to parallel simulation
than efficient codes.
For the Acumen research program to take off, and to develop
more traditional research funding proposals, attaining some
preliminary results along these two dimensions is of crucial importance.
To this end, we propose a two year activity that will
develop Acumen along two dimensions that will allow us to
accumulate a wide range of preliminary results that would form
a solid basis for pursuing funding from a wide range of sources
beyond CERES and the KK foundation. The proposed project
also includes a component on developing international connections
both in terms of software development and in terms
of teaching a course on the results of the project internationally.
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References
The Acumen Distribution at www.acumen-language.org.
Mathematical Equations as Executable Models, Yun Zhu,
Edwin Westbrook, Jun Inoue, Alexandre Chapoutot,
Cherif Salama, Marisa Peralta, Travis Martin, Walid Taha,
Marcia O’Malley, Robert Cartwright, Aaron Ames, Raktim
Bhattacharya, The First International ACM/IEE Conference
on Cyber Physical Systems (ICCPS’10), Stockholm,
2010.
In Pursuit of Real Answers, Angela Yun Zhu, Walid Taha,
Robert Cartwright, Matthieu Martel, Jeremy G. Siek, International
Conference on Embedded Software and Systems
(ICESS’09), Hangzhou, 2009.
“Globally Parallel, Locally Sequential”, Paul Brauner and
Walid Taha, International Workshop on Parallel/High-
Performance Object-Oriented Scientific Computing (PO-
OSC'10), Las Vegas, 2010.
Differential dynamic logic for hybrid systems, Andre
Platzer, Journal of Automated Reasoning, 2008 - Springer.
The Ambric, Wikipedia Article.
A new representation for exact real numbers, A Edalat,
Electronic Notes in Theoretical Computer Science, 1997
- Elsevier.
Research Questions
The overarching question behind this research is whether simulation
technologies can be relied on for early experimentation
with novel designs of embedded and cooperative systems. This
general question gives rise to important technical questions,
including:
• Are there effective and efficient methods for detecting numerical
precision errors?
• Are there ways to effectively and efficiently compute with
variable precision representations?
• Are there ways to unify the diverse methods available from
numerical computation, starting from integration to more
sophisticated operations?
CERES Annual Report 2012
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