COSSIM aimed at introducing a novel CPS simulation framework that would allow CPS designers to simulate, in an integrated way, the digital processing parts of each node of a CPS and the network interactions between all connected nodes, while capturing energy requirements and reporting certain security issues. The completed project had the following objectives, which have all been fully reached:
• Develop an open-source simulation framework backed by a large community that can, for the first time, simulate a complete CPS comprising of CPS nodes incorporating multi-core CPUs, complex accelerators and peripherals, interconnected with complex and heterogeneous networks. COSSIM extended and integrated different simulators that are adopted by the industrial/research community and are proven in practice for their efficiency and has adapted them to the specific needs of CPS as well as cloud and HPC systems, thus offering a simulation environment with functionality and accuracy beyond any currently available solution.
•Significantly accelerate simulation of complex CPS when compared with the existing solutions. Integration of previously disconnected simulators, in every aspect of the CPS/HPC/Cloud design process, leads to increased productivity and decreases (if not eliminates) the amount of time engineers need to spend in tasks not directly relevant to their main CPS/HPC/Cloud design effort (for example effort spent to adapt simulation results of a specific tool so that they can be used as input to another tool measuring a different aspect of the CPS under design). On top of that, all CPS simulation tools require enormous amounts of processing power and time in order to perform a simulation run and COSSIM drastically reduces those times by using parallel systems and reconfigurable devices to accelerate the simulation process.
•Provide more accurate power consumption estimations, than existing solutions, by using higher quality (lower level) power estimation tools and models and tightly integrating processing and network simulators with power estimators.
•Support, for the first time in a CPS tool, security features/levels as aspects of the system simulation. COSSIM has developed internally security testing mechanisms that tap directly into the CPS simulators that are being developed and provide reports and tests on critical security aspects that have to be investigated.
•Simulate three real-world applications from different domains so as to demonstrate all the above unique features in highly demanding commercial environments. COSSIM’s industrial partners have contributed applications which are already deployed or scheduled to be deployed in actual products, thus making it possible to test the simulation results produced by the COSSIM framework with actual real-world data.
