Rigorous System Design in BIP

The Institute of Information Systems hosted a talk by Joseph Sifakis on April 12, 2016.

ABSTRACT

Today, the development costs of high confidence systems explode with
their size. We are far away from the solution of the so called,
software crisis. In fact, the latter hides another much bigger: the
system crisis.

In my talk I will discuss rigorous system design as a formal and
accountable process leading from requirements to
correct-by-construction implementations. I will also discuss current
limitations of the state of the art and advocate a coherent scientific
foundation for system design based on four principles: 1) separation
of concerns; 2) component-based construction; 3) semantic coherency;
4) correctness-by-construction. The combined application of these
principles allows the definition of a methodology clearly identifying
where human intervention and ingenuity are needed to resolve design
choices, as well as activities that can be supported by tools to
automate tedious and error- prone tasks.

The presented view for rigorous system design has been amply
implemented in the BIP (Behavior, Interaction, Priority) component
framework and substantiated by numerous experimental results showing
both its relevance and feasibility. I will conclude with a discussion
advocating a system-centric vision for computing, and a deeper
interaction and cross-fertilization with other more mature scientific
disciplines.