Wrong Assumptions and Neglected Areas in Embedded Systems Research

Today many embedded computer applications are developed under the assumptions that the hardware works always as described in the documentation, the operating system is free of design errors and the clients use the system as specified. These assumptions lead to systems that are fragile - they break if even a single transistor out of a billion transistors chip occasionally malfunctions or a sporadic Heisenbug [J. Gray, 1986] occurs in the operating system.