Ant Colony Heuristic for Mapping and Scheduling Tasks and Communications on Heterogeneous Embedded Systems

To exploit the power of modern heterogeneous multiprocessor embedded platforms on partitioned applications, the designer usually needs to efficiently map and schedule all the tasks and the communications of the application, respecting the constraints imposed by the target architecture. Since the problem is heavily constrained, common methods used to explore such design space usually fail, obtaining low-quality solutions. In this paper, we propose an ant colony optimization (ACO) heuristic that, given a model of the target architecture and the application, efficiently executes both scheduling and mapping to optimize the application performance. We compare our approach with several other heuristics, including simulated annealing, tabu search, and genetic algorithms, on the performance to reach the optimum value and on the potential to explore the design space. We show that our approach obtains better results than other heuristics by at least 16% on average, despite an overhead in execution time. Finally, we validate the approach by scheduling and mapping a JPEG encoder on a realistic target architecture

Exploring resource/performance trade-offs for streaming applications on embedded multiprocessors

Embedded system design is challenged by the gap between the ever-increasing customer demands and the limited resource budgets. The tough competition demands ever-shortening time-to-market and product lifecycles. To solve or, at least to alleviate, the aforementioned issues, designers and manufacturers need model-based quantitative analysis techniques for early design-space exploration to study trade-offs of different implementation candidates. Moreover, modern embedded applications, especially the streaming applications addressed in this thesis, face more and more dynamic input contents, and the platforms that they are running on are more flexible and allow runtime configuration. Quantitative analysis techniques for embedded system design have to be able to handle such dynamic adaptable systems. This thesis has the following contributions: - A resource-aware extension to the Synchronous Dataflow (SDF) model of computation. - Trade-off analysis techniques, both in the time-domain and in the iterationdomain (i.e., on an SDF iteration basis), with support for resource sharing. - Bottleneck-driven design-space exploration techniques for resource-aware SDF. - A game-theoretic approach to controller synthesis, guaranteeing performance under dynamic input. As a first contribution, we propose a new model, as an extension of static synchronous dataflow graphs (SDF) that allows the explicit modeling of resources with consistency checking. The model is called resource-aware SDF (RASDF). The extension enables us to investigate resource sharing and to explore different scheduling options (ways to allocate the resources to the different tasks) using state-space exploration techniques. Consistent SDF and RASDF graphs have the property that an execution occurs in so-called iterations. An iteration typically corresponds to the processing of a meaningful piece of data, and it returns the graph to its initial state. On multiprocessor platforms, iterations may be executed in a pipelined fashion, which makes performance analysis challenging. As the second contribution, this thesis develops trade-off analysis techniques for RASDF, both in the time-domain and in the iteration-domain (i.e., on an SDF iteration basis), to dimension resources on platforms. The time-domain analysis allows interleaving of different iterations, but the size of the explored state space grows quickly. The iteration-based technique trades the potential of interleaving of iterations for a compact size of the iteration state space. An efficient bottleneck-driven designspace exploration technique for streaming applications, the third main contribution in this thesis, is derived from analysis of the critical cycle of the state space, to reveal bottleneck resources that are limiting the throughput. All techniques are based on state-based exploration. They enable system designers to tailor their platform to the required applications, based on their own specific performance requirements. Pruning techniques for efficient exploration of the state space have been developed. Pareto dominance in terms of performance and resource usage is used for exact pruning, and approximation techniques are used for heuristic pruning. Finally, the thesis investigates dynamic scheduling techniques to respond to dynamic changes in input streams. The fourth contribution in this thesis is a game-theoretic approach to tackle controller synthesis to select the appropriate schedules in response to dynamic inputs from the environment. The approach transforms the explored iteration state space of a scenario- and resource-aware SDF (SARA SDF) graph to a bipartite game graph, and maps the controller synthesis problem to the problem of finding a winning positional strategy in a classical mean payoff game. A winning strategy of the game can be used to synthesize the controller of schedules for the system that is guaranteed to satisfy the throughput requirement given by the designer

Design Space Exploration and Resource Management of Multi/Many-Core Systems

The increasing demand of processing a higher number of applications and related data on computing platforms has resulted in reliance on multi-/many-core chips as they facilitate parallel processing. However, there is a desire for these platforms to be energy-efficient and reliable, and they need to perform secure computations for the interest of the whole community. This book provides perspectives on the aforementioned aspects from leading researchers in terms of state-of-the-art contributions and upcoming trends

Performance Evaluation - Annual Report Year 3

This report describes the work done and results obtained in third year of the CATNETS project. Experiments carried out with the different configurations of the prototype are reported and simulation results are evaluated with the CATNETS metrics framework. The applicability of the Catallactic approach as market model for service and resource allocation in application layer networks is assessed based on the results and experience gained both from the prototype development and simulations. --Grid Computing

Model-based symbolic design space exploration at the electronic system level: a systematic approach

In this thesis, a novel, fully systematic approach is proposed that addresses the automated design space exploration at the electronic system level. The problem is formulated as multi-objective optimization problem and is encoded symbolically using Answer Set Programming (ASP). Several specialized solvers are tightly coupled as background theories with the foreground ASP solver under the ASP modulo Theories (ASPmT) paradigm. By utilizing the ASPmT paradigm, the search is executed entirely systematically and the disparate synthesis steps can be coupled to explore the search space effectively.In dieser Arbeit wird ein vollständig systematischer Ansatz präsentiert, der sich mit der Entwurfsraumexploration auf der elektronischen Systemebene befasst. Das Problem wird als multikriterielles Optimierungsproblem formuliert und symbolisch mit Hilfe von Answer Set Programming (ASP) kodiert. Spezialisierte Solver sind im Rahmen des ASP modulo Theories (ASPmT) Paradigmas als Hintergrundtheorien eng mit dem ASP Solver gekoppelt. Durch die Verwendung von ASPmT wird die Suche systematisch ausgeführt und die individuellen Schritte können gekoppelt werden, um den Suchraum effektiv zu durchsuchen

Distributed and Lightweight Meta-heuristic Optimization method for Complex Problems

The world is becoming more prominent and more complex every day. The resources are limited and efficiently use them is one of the most requirement. Finding an Efficient and optimal solution in complex problems needs to practical methods. During the last decades, several optimization approaches have been presented that they can apply to different optimization problems, and they can achieve different performance on various problems. Different parameters can have a significant effect on the results, such as the type of search spaces. Between the main categories of optimization methods (deterministic and stochastic methods), stochastic optimization methods work more efficient on big complex problems than deterministic methods. But in highly complex problems, stochastic optimization methods also have some issues, such as execution time, convergence to local optimum, incompatible with distributed systems, and dependence on the type of search spaces. Therefore this thesis presents a distributed and lightweight metaheuristic optimization method (MICGA) for complex problems focusing on four main tracks. 1) The primary goal is to improve the execution time by MICGA. 2) The proposed method increases the stability and reliability of the results by using the multi-population strategy in the second track. 3) MICGA is compatible with distributed systems. 4) Finally, MICGA is applied to the different type of optimization problems with other kinds of search spaces (continuous, discrete and order based optimization problems). MICGA has been compared with other efficient optimization approaches. The results show the proposed work has been achieved enough improvement on the main issues of the stochastic methods that are mentioned before.Maailmasta on päivä päivältä tulossa yhä monimutkaisempi. Resurssit ovat rajalliset, ja siksi niiden tehokas käyttö on erittäin tärkeää. Tehokkaan ja optimaalisen ratkaisun löytäminen monimutkaisiin ongelmiin vaatii tehokkaita käytännön menetelmiä. Viime vuosikymmenien aikana on ehdotettu useita optimointimenetelmiä, joilla jokaisella on vahvuutensa ja heikkoutensa suorituskyvyn ja tarkkuuden suhteen erityyppisten ongelmien ratkaisemisessa. Parametreilla, kuten hakuavaruuden tyypillä, voi olla merkittävä vaikutus tuloksiin. Optimointimenetelmien pääryhmistä (deterministiset ja stokastiset menetelmät) stokastinen optimointi toimii suurissa monimutkaisissa ongelmissa tehokkaammin kuin deterministinen optimointi. Erittäin monimutkaisissa ongelmissa stokastisilla optimointimenetelmillä on kuitenkin myös joitain ongelmia, kuten korkeat suoritusajat, päätyminen paikallisiin optimipisteisiin, yhteensopimattomuus hajautetun toteutuksen kanssa ja riippuvuus hakuavaruuden tyypistä. Tämä opinnäytetyö esittelee hajautetun ja kevyen metaheuristisen optimointimenetelmän (MICGA) monimutkaisille ongelmille keskittyen neljään päätavoitteeseen: 1) Ensisijaisena tavoitteena on pienentää suoritusaikaa MICGA:n avulla. 2) Lisäksi ehdotettu menetelmä lisää tulosten vakautta ja luotettavuutta käyttämällä monipopulaatiostrategiaa. 3) MICGA tukee hajautettua toteutusta. 4) Lopuksi MICGA-menetelmää sovelletaan erilaisiin optimointiongelmiin, jotka edustavat erityyppisiä hakuavaruuksia (jatkuvat, diskreetit ja järjestykseen perustuvat optimointiongelmat). Työssä MICGA-menetelmää verrataan muihin tehokkaisiin optimointimenetelmiin. Tulokset osoittavat, että ehdotetulla menetelmällä saavutetaan selkeitä parannuksia yllä mainittuihin stokastisten menetelmien pääongelmiin liittyen