Deploying Hard Real-Time Control Software on Chip-Multiprocessors

Abstract—Deploying real-time control systems software on multiprocessors requires distributing tasks on multiple processing nodes and coordinating their executions using a protocol. One such protocol is the discrete-event (DE) model of computation. In this paper, we investigate distributed discrete-event (DE) with null-message protocol (NMP) on a multicore system for real-time control software. We illustrate analytically and experimentally that even with the null-message deadlock avoidance scheme in the protocol, the system can deadlock due to inter-core message dependencies. We identify two central reasons for such deadlocks: 1) the lack of an upper-bound on packet transmission rates and processing capability, and 2) an unknown upper-bound on the communication network delay. To address these, we propose using architectural features such as timing control and real-time network-on-chips to prevent such message-dependent deadlocks. We employ these architectural techniques in conjunction with a distributed DE strategy called PTIDES for an illustrative car wash station example and later follow it with a more realistic tunnelling ball device application

Microgrid - The microthreaded many-core architecture

Traditional processors use the von Neumann execution model, some other processors in the past have used the dataflow execution model. A combination of von Neuman model and dataflow model is also tried in the past and the resultant model is referred as hybrid dataflow execution model. We describe a hybrid dataflow model known as the microthreading. It provides constructs for creation, synchronization and communication between threads in an intermediate language. The microthreading model is an abstract programming and machine model for many-core architecture. A particular instance of this model is named as the microthreaded architecture or the Microgrid. This architecture implements all the concurrency constructs of the microthreading model in the hardware with the management of these constructs in the hardware.Comment: 30 pages, 16 figure

Control Plane for Embedded DSP

This project is sponsored by MITRE Corporation to develop a scalable and reusable control plane architecture for VLSI design. The main goal of this project is to develop a communication platform for a wide range of applications to reduce the development and testing time associated with the design of a interconnect system. Thorough research has been conducted in the area of network-on-chip designs that are suitable for these types of applications. The necessary components are built and verified in hardware description language. The deliverable components are packaged as reusable and parameterized SystemVerilog code

Submicron Systems Architecture: Semiannual Technical Report

No abstract available

Tree-structured small-world connected wireless network-on-chip with adaptive routing

Traditional Network-on-Chip (NoC) systems comprised of many cores suffer from debilitating bottlenecks of latency and significant power dissipation due to the overhead inherent in multi-hop communication. In addition, these systems remain vulnerable to malicious circuitry incorporated into the design by untrustworthy vendors in a world where complex multi-stage design and manufacturing processes require the collective specialized services of a variety of contractors. This thesis proposes a novel small-world tree-based network-on-chip (SWTNoC) structure designed for high throughput, acceptable energy consumption, and resiliency to attacks and node failures resulting from the insertion of hardware Trojans. This tree-based implementation was devised as a means of reducing average network hop count, providing a large degree of local connectivity, and effective long-range connectivity by means of a novel wireless link approach based on carbon nanotube (CNT) antenna design. Network resiliency is achieved by means of a devised adaptive routing algorithm implemented to work with TRAIN (Tree-based Routing Architecture for Irregular Networks). Comparisons are drawn with benchmark architectures with optimized wireless link placement by means of the simulated annealing (SA) metaheuristic. Experimental results demonstrate a 21% throughput improvement and a 23% reduction in dissipated energy per packet over the closest competing architecture. Similar trends are observed at increasing system sizes. In addition, the SWTNoC maintains this throughput and energy advantage in the presence of a fault introduced into the system. By designing a hierarchical topology and designating a higher level of importance on a subset of the nodes, much higher network throughput can be attained while simultaneously guaranteeing deadlock freedom as well as a high degree of resiliency and fault-tolerance

Performance Evaluation of XY and XTRANC Routing Algorithm for Network on Chip and Implementation using DART Simulator

In today’s world Network on Chip(NoC) is one of the most efficient on chip communication platform for System on Chip where a large amount of computational and storage blocks are integrated on a single chip. NoCs are scalable and have tackled the short commings of SoCs . In the first part of this project the basics of NoCs is explained which includes why we should use NoC , how to implement NoC ,various blocks of NoCs .The next part of the project deals with the implementation of XY routing algorithm in mesh (3*3) and mesh (4*4) network topologies. The throughput and latency curves for both the topologies were found and a through comparison was done by varying the no of virtual cannels. In the next part an improvised routing algorithm known as the extended torus(XTRANC) routing algorithm for NoCs implementation is explained. This algorithm is designed for inner torus mesh networks and provides better performance than usual routing algorithms. It has been implemented using the CONNECT simulator. Then the DART simulator was explored and two important components namely the flitqueue and the traffic generator was designed using this simulator