Project archive (2006–2009). This page preserves the original text of the FRESCOR research project website (EU Sixth Framework Programme, FP6/2005/IST/5-034026) for historical and educational purposes. The current frescor.org is an independent resource and is not operated by, or affiliated with, the original consortium or the European Commission — see the Disclaimer.
A summary of the expected results of the project is:
- A contract specification and API that describes the interaction between the application and the underlying hardware (RTOS and networks).
- An implementation of the contract framework in at least two operating systems: an open source RTOS and a commercial RTOS.
- Implementations of the contract framework for several profiles designed for different architectures and resources: core services for all systems, extensions to multiprocessor architectures, extensions to reconfigurable architectures based on FPGAs.
- An implementation of the contract framework on several networks: for standard network protocols, for a field bus, and for wireless networks.
- A middleware layer that manages the contract negotiations for distributed transactions.
- A top-level middleware layer consisting of a quality of service manager that translates the high-level application requirements into contract specifications.
- A component-based framework adapted to supporting timing properties and integrated with the underlying contract framework.
- A tracing mechanism that can profile the timing properties of a software application component.
- A design methodology for the application contracts, capable of automatically using the information obtained by the tracing mechanism.
- A simulation tool supporting the design methodology that is capable of performing design space exploration.
- An interface for using the contract framework from a Matlab/Simulink design process.
- An evaluation of the contract framework, the component-based framework and the design methodologies and tools through usage in three industrial applications.
The combination of all these project results will ensure a direct applicability of the framework in practical industrial development processes. Exploitation of the successful results can have a European Union scale, as two of the project partners (Thales and ENEA) are major players in the embedded systems market and may influence their well-established user base.
Try it yourself: the admission test at the heart of a contract framework is a schedulability test. Experiment with one in our free schedulability calculator.