CompDSE: A Methodology for Design Space Exploration of Computing Subsystems Within Complex Cyber-Physical Systems

Designing the next-generation complex distributed cyber-physical systems (dCPS) poses significant challenges for manufacturing companies, necessitating efficient design space exploration (DSE) techniques to evaluate potential design decisions and their impact on nonfunctional aspects of the systems, such as performance, reliability and energy consumption. This paper introduces CompDSE, a methodology designed to facilitate the DSE of complex dCPS, specifically focusing on the cyber components, that is, the computing subsystems within dCPS. CompDSE defines and utilises abstract models of the application workload, computing hardware platform and workload-to-platform mapping of dCPS, automatically derived from runtime trace data, and integrates them into a discrete event simulation environment to explore various design points. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our methodology through a case study on the ASML TWINSCAN lithography machine, a complex industrial dCPS. The results showcase potential performance enhancements achieved by optimising computing subsystems while considering physical constraints. Evaluating each design point takes under a minute, highlighting the CompDSE efficiency and scalability in tackling complex dCPS with large design spaces.