HARSH-2013 will provide a unique forum for the discussion of the challenges in
the design and operation of harsh environment-capable embedded processors.

Nowadays, embedded chips are deployed almost everywhere, from mobile phones to
on-board electronics in automobiles and satellites. Different from conventional
microprocessor designs, the operation conditions of embedded processors are
severely constrained by the environment. For example, in aerospace applications,
the computer installed on Mars rover "Curiosity" has to tolerate extreme space
radiation and temperatures, operate at low power, and provide enough computation
capability to perform mission-critical tasks. Embedded designs for Unmanned
Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) also encounter extremely challenging design requirements.
Despite their tight power budget, UAV chips demand significant throughput for
real-time high-speed image processing. In the context of oil and gas exploration
and extraction, embedded processors can be found even on the drill string
itself, to process sensor inputs in real time while withstanding high
temperatures and humidity levels.

To guarantee reliability across these drastically diverse environments, the
design and operation of embedded processors should not be solely confined to the
chip but traverse different layers in the computing system, involving firmware,
operating system, applications, as well as power management units and
communication interfaces. The goal of HARSH-2013 is to facilitate the exchange
of the latest ideas, insights, and knowledge related to all critical aspects of
new-generation harsh environment-capable embedded processors, including
micro-architectural approaches, cross-stack hardware/software techniques, and
emerging challenges and opportunities. We hope to attract a group of
interdisciplinary researchers from academia, industry, and government research
labs.

In addition to the presentation of selected paper submissions, keynote speakers
will be invited to kick-off the workshop sessions and a "Best Paper" award
will be presented at the conclusion of the workshop. To encourage discussion
between participants, HARSH-2013 will organize dedicated programs for discussion
between presenters and the audience.


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TOPICS
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Topics of interest include but are not limited to:

(1) Architecture design and implementation for highly-reliable
power-efficient embedded processors:
- Architectural approaches for reliability assurance under
very-low power budgets.
- Availability, soft-error tolerance and recovery issues.
- Highly-reliable cache/memory hierarchies.
- Massive heterogeneous processing capabilities.
- Power management techniques.
- Very-low power, reliable real-time processing.
- Specialized accelerator architectures and unique designs.
- Reusable and/or reconfigurable embedded designs.
- Packaging and cooling.

(2) Cross-stack hardware/software techniques:
- Cross-stack approaches for reliability assurance under
very-low power budgets.
- Reliability- and power-aware operating systems, compilers,
workload managers, firmware and other software.
- Workload analysis and optimization for reliable low-power
embedded systems.

(3) Applications:
- Aerospace: unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), planetary rovers
and space probes, satellites, avionic systems, etc.
- Medical support: lifesaving monitors, portable medical devices,
high-end imaging systems, etc.
- Oil and gas exploration and extraction: unmanned underwater
vehicles (UUVs), measurement while drilling (MWD), logging while
drilling (LWD), etc.
- Aerial surveillance.
- Disaster search, rescue, and relief.
- Novel applications for highly-reliable low-power embedded chips.