Intro, Outlook, Retrospect Session Wrap-Up Dagstuhl Seminar May 01 – 06, 2011

1. Intro, Outlook, Retrospect SessionWrap-UpDagstuhl SeminarMay 01 – 06, 2011

2. What are the technical questions covered in this session? • General overview on Organic Computing program by DFG • Conceptual implications of shift from design-time to run-time design on established system design flows • Entry points for OC to enrich Model-based Design • A decade of experience in building adaptive systems

3. Game of Life [Conway70] Constituent pattern determines system level behavior: • Rotary, translatory movements, oscillation, persistence, … • … in combination and with varying parameters Conway (rule 3/3) hexagonal (rule 34/2) If (cell alive AND N = 3) then live unchanged to next generation Else if (cell alive AND N < 2 OR N > 3) then death by loneliness or overcrowding Else if (cell dead AND N = 3) then birth of new cell in next generation End

4. Where do we have agreement and disagreements? • Agreements • Organic Computing program yielded numerous examples demonstrating the viability for applying self-organization to system design • The more complex systems become, the more necessary it is to identify paths to migrate more aspects of design from design-time to run-time • Personal observations: • Seminar presentations tended to give way more focus on the opportunities of SO than on its challenges and risks (?) • Try on interactive Game of Life simulator website:http://www.cut-the-knot.org/Curriculum/Combinatorics/Life.shtml

5. Where do we have agreement and disagreements? • Agreements • Organic Computing program yielded numerous examples demonstrating the viability for applying self-organization to system design • The more complex systems become, the more necessary it is to identify paths to migrate more aspects of design from design-time to run-time • Personal observations: • Seminar presentations tended to give way more focus on the opportunities of SO than on its challenges and risks (?) • Small change in system may have a huge impact on system behavior • Configuration Space: Small modification in component behavior (rules) may have huge impact on system behavior • Design-space versus configuration-space!

6. Where do we have agreement and disagreements? • Personal observations: • Errors are not tolerated in technical systems (?) • Doesn’t mainly matter how critical an error is? • Regard errors, that can be tolerated, as a necessity to learn(and improve)? • If an application / system can’t tolerate errors, then apply background OC simulation / rule validation before application • OR constrain SO by setting hard bounds • OR, combine OC methods with error resilient design techniques, which do exist since a long time

7. Common principles and opposite directions pursued • Common principles • Multi-layer observer-control with online and offline learning • What commonalities evolved on other aspects of OC (methods / tools, architectures for OC applications)? • Opposite directions: Personal opinion • OC as a means to cope with complexity of complex systems OR can OC / SO even more be applied for reducing the complexity of systems? • Best way to cope with complexity is to AVOID complexity! • This would then be another design-time aspect of system design

8. What is (to large extent) unexplored territory? • Non-functional requirements: robustness, safety, reliability, real-time, scalability; with GUARANTEES (quantitative metrics) • Can non-functional requirements be added-in in a “second round” or would it possibly imply to re-architect the foundations / basics of OC? • Appropriate interface for controlled self-organization • Which interfaces? Between OC layers (rule application / evaluation and productive system) or between OC layers and design tools to develop these layers, or both? • User to system interaction • Systematic approach / framework to reason about behavior in unanticipated situations (SO Simulator ?) • Testability, verification of self-organizing behavior

9. Other Questions • OC points of entry into MBD: Which steps are automated in today’s MBD, which manual? Refine means synthesis? • How does OC modify the V-Design cycle? • How would OC modify MBD? (and vice versa) • Cost of OC / SO in design cycle? • Benchmarking against “other” methods • Make clear where OC / SO has a unique value proposition

10. Self-Organization / Emergence [Fromm04] Localbehavior of the constituents of a self-organizing system may lead to observable, emergent global behavior which is not reflected in local behavior / rules • Population of interacting system constituents • System is hierarchically structured (multi-layer organization) • Emergent behavior observable at levelsabove constituent level (system level or system environment) as a result of hidden causal relationshipsacross levels System