SBIR-STTR Award

Increasing Navy use of embedded computer systems results in stringent requirements for real-time performance, reliability, and cost. Computer systems are critical embedded components of Naval warfare systems. The demands on embedded computer systems are increasing in terms of information processing and storage/retrieval. The designer must analyze results across many dimensions to identify critical design components and initiate design changes that meet numerous requirements simultaneously. These mission critical distributed computer systems are too complex to engineer without automated support. Currently available stand-alone support tools provide no help for managing complex design tradeoffs between performance, reliability, and cost. Previous research results can provide a basis for developing an expert system for extensible, multi-measure design evaluation of real-time distributed systems. The Phase l effort will determine the feasibility of developing an expert system/ performance modeling tool to provide extensible support for engineering complex real-time, distributed systems. The proposed tool will be of immediate use by the Navy. It will result in lower cost, greater reliability, and higher performance while reducing developmental and operational risks. Because the expert system will be extensible, it will be applicable to a wide range of Naval systems.

Increasing Navy use of mission-critical computer systems results in stringent requirements for real-time performance, reliability, and cost. Designers must analyze systems across many dimensions to identify critical design components and initiate design changes that meet numerous requirements simultaneously. These mission-critical distributed computer systems are too complex to engineer without automated support. Currently available standalone suppor tools do not provide sufficient assistance for managing complex design tradeoffs between performance, reliability, and cost. QUEST will provide designers with a graphical user interface (GUI) to build and access descriptions of mission-critical systems. QUEST will contain measurement generation capabilities covering three critical quantitative evaluation dimensions - performance, reliability, and cost. QUEST will contain an expert system to interpret the data produced by quantitative models and advise users on problems and recommended solutions. QUEST will be designed for extensibility. The system design capture is extended via meta-models and their corresponding GUI definitions. A generalized measurement capability of QUEST will provide for flexibility in defining new measurements and linking them with other QUEST components. A rule definition capability will allow the user to develop and reuse applicaiton-specific knowledge. The Phase II effort will implement QUEST and demonstrate its utility in a wide variety of complex computer system engineering applications.

Keywords:
EXPERT SYSTEM EXTENSIBLE SYSTEM PERFORMANCE MODELING COST MODELING KNOWLEDGE-BASED SYSTEM