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

Efficient State Retention for Transiently-powered Embedded Sensing

We present state retention techniques to support embedded sensing applications on 32-bit microcontrollers whose energy provisioning is assisted through ambient harvesting or wireless energy transfer. As energy availability is likely erratic in these settings, applications may be unpredictably interrupted. To behave dependably, applications should resume from where they left as soon as energy is newly available. We investigate the fundamental building block necessary to this end, and conceive three mechanisms to checkpoint and restore a device's state on stable storage quickly and in an energy-efficient manner. The problem is unique in many regards; for example, because of the distinctive performance vs. energy trade-offs of modern 32-bit microcontrollers and the peculiar characteristics of current flash chips. Our results, obtained from real experiments using two different platforms, crucially indicate that there is no ``one-size-fits-all'' solution. The performance depends on factors such as the amount of data to handle, how in memory the data is laid out, as well as an application's read/write patterns

MARTE/pCCSL: Modeling and Refining Stochastic Behaviors of CPSs with Probabilistic Logical Clocks

Best Paper AwardInternational audienceCyber-Physical Systems (CPSs) are networks of heterogeneous embedded systems immersed within a physical environment. Several ad-hoc frameworks and mathematical models have been studied to deal with challenging issues raised by CPSs. In this paper, we explore a more standard-based approach that relies on SysML/MARTE to capture different aspects of CPSs, including structure, behaviors, clock constraints, and non-functional properties. The novelty of our work lies in the use of logical clocks and MARTE/CCSL to drive and coordinate different models. Meanwhile, to capture stochastic behaviors of CPSs, we propose an extension of CCSL, called pCCSL, where logical clocks are adorned with stochastic properties. Possible variants are explored using Statistical Model Checking (SMC) via a transformation from the MARTE/pCCSL models into Stochastic Hybrid Automata. The whole process is illustrated through a case study of energy-aware building, in which the system is modeled by SysML/MARTE/pCCSL and different variants are explored through SMC to help expose the best alternative solutions

실시간 임베디드 시스템을 위한 동적 행위 명세 및 설계 공간 탐색 기법

학위논문 (박사)-- 서울대학교 대학원 : 전기·컴퓨터공학부, 2016. 8. 하순회.하나의 칩에 집적되는 프로세서의 개수가 많아지고, 많은 기능들이 통합됨에 따라, 연산양의 변화, 서비스의 품질, 예상치 못한 시스템 요소의 고장 등과 같은 다양한 요소들에 의해 시스템의 상태가 동적으로 변화하게 된다. 반면에, 본 논문에서 주된 관심사를 가지는 스마트 폰 장치에서 주로 사용되는 비디오, 그래픽 응용들의 경우, 계산 복잡도가 지속적으로 증가하고 있다. 따라서, 이렇게 동적으로 변하는 행위를 가지면서도 병렬성을 내제한 계산 집약적인 연산을 포함하는 복잡한 시스템을 구현하기 위해서는 체계적인 설계 방법론이 고도로 요구된다. 모델 기반 방법론은 병렬 임베디드 소프트웨어 개발을 위한 대표적인 방법 중 하나이다. 특히, 시스템 명세, 정적 성능 분석, 설계 공간 탐색, 그리고 자동 코드 생성까지의 모든 설계 단계를 지원하는 병렬 임베디드 소프트웨어 설계 환경으로서, HOPES 프레임워크가 제시되었다. 다른 설계 환경들과는 다르게, 이기종 멀티프로세서 아키텍처에서의 일반적인 수행 모델로서, 공통 중간 코드 (CIC) 라고 부르는 프로그래밍 플랫폼이라는 새로운 개념을 소개하였다. CIC 태스크 모델은 프로세스 네트워크 모델에 기반하고 있지만, SDF 모델로 구체화될 수 있기 때문에, 병렬 처리뿐만 아니라 정적 분석이 용이하다는 장점을 가진다. 하지만, SDF 모델은 응용의 동적인 행위를 명세할 수 없다는 표현상의 제약을 가진다. 이러한 제약을 극복하고, 시스템의 동적 행위를 응용 외부와 내부로 구분하여 명세하기 위해, 본 논문에서는 데이터 플로우와 유한상태기 (FSM) 모델에 기반하여 확장된 CIC 태스크 모델을 제안한다. 상위 수준에서는, 각 응용은 데이터 플로우 태스크로 명세 되며, 동적 행위는 응용들의 수행을 감독하는 제어 태스크로 모델 된다. 데이터 플로우 태스크 내부는, 유한상태기 기반의 SADF 모델과 유사한 형태로 동적 행위가 명세 된다SDF 태스크는 복수개의 행위를 가질 수 있으며, 모드 전환기 (MTM)이라고 불리는 유한 상태기의 테이블 형태의 명세를 통해 SDF 그래프의 모드 전환 규칙을 명세 한다. 이를 MTM-SDF 그래프라고 부르며, 복수 모드 데이터 플로우 모델 중 하나라 구분된다. 응용은 유한한 행위 (또는 모드)를 가지며, 각 행위 (모드)는 SDF 그래프로 표현되는 것을 가정한다. 이를 통해 다양한 프로세서 개수에 대해 단위시간당 처리량을 최대화하는 컴파일-시간 스케줄링을 수행하고, 스케줄 결과를 저장할 수 있도록 한다. 또한, 복수 모드 데이터 플로우 그래프를 위한 멀티프로세서 스케줄링 기법을 제시한다. 복수 모드 데이터 플로우 그래프를 위한 몇몇 스케줄링 기법들이 존재하지만, 모드 사이에 태스크 이주를 허용한 기법들은 존재하지 않는다. 하지만 태스크 이주를 허용하게 되면 자원 요구량을 줄일 수 있다는 발견을 통해, 본 논문에서는 모드 사이의 태스크 이주를 허용하는 복수 모드 데이터 플로우 그래프를 위한 멀티프로세서 스케줄링 기법을 제안한다. 유전 알고리즘에 기반하여, 제안하는 기법은 자원 요구량을 최소화하기 위해 각 모드에 해당하는 모든 SDF 그래프를 동시에 스케줄 한다. 주어진 단위 시간당 처리량 제약을 만족시키기 위해, 제안하는 기법은 각 모드 별로 실제 처리량 요구량을 계산하며, 처리량의 불규칙성을 완화하기 위한 출력 버퍼의 크기를 계산한다. 명세된 태스크 그래프와 스케줄 결과로부터, HOPES 프레임워크는 대상 아키텍처를 위한 자동 코드 생성을 지원한다. 이를 위해 자동 코드 생성기는 CIC 태스크 모델의 확장된 특징들을 지원하도록 확장되었다. 응용 수준에서는 MTM-SDF 그래프를 주어진 정적 스케줄링 결과를 따르는 멀티프로세서 코드를 생성하도록 확장되었다. 또한, 네 가지 서로 다른 스케줄링 정책 (fully-static, self-timed, static-assignment, fully-dynamic)에 대한 멀티프로세서 코드 생성을 지원한다. 시스템 수준에서는 지원하는 시스템 요청 API에 대한 실제 구현 코드를 생성하며, 정적 스케줄 결과와 태스크들의 제어 가능한 속성들에 대한 자료 구조 코드를 생성한다. 복수 모드 멀티미디어 터미널 예제를 통한 기초적인 실험들을 통해, 제안하는 방법론의 타당성을 보인다.As the number of processors in a chip increases, and more functions are integrated, the system status will change dynamically due to various factors such as the workload variation, QoS requirement, and unexpected component failure. On the other hand, computation-complexity of user applications is also steadily increasingvideo and graphics applications are two major driving forces in smart mobile devices, which define the main application domain of interest in this dissertation. So, a systematic design methodology is highly required to implement such complex systems which contain dynamically changed behavior as well as computation-intensive workload that can be parallelized. A model-based approach is one of representative approaches for parallel embedded software development. Especially, HOPES framework is proposed which is a design environment for parallel embedded software supporting the overall design steps: system specification, performance estimation, design space exploration, and automatic code generation. Distinguished from other design environments, it introduces a novel concept of programming platform, called CIC (Common Intermediate Code) that can be understood as a generic execution model of heterogeneous multiprocessor architecture. The CIC task model is based on a process network model, but it can be refined to the SDF (Synchronous Data Flow) model, since it has a very desirable features for static analyzability as well as parallel processing. However, the SDF model has a typical weakness of expression capability, especially for the system-level specification and dynamically changed behavior of an application. To overcome this weakness, in this dissertation, we propose an extended CIC task model based on dataflow and FSM models to specify the dynamic behavior of the system distinguishing inter- and intra-application dynamism. At the top-level, each application is specified by a dataflow task and the dynamic behavior is modeled as a control task that supervises the execution of applications. Inside a dataflow task, it specifies the dynamic behavior using a similar way as FSM-based SADFan SDF task may have multiple behaviors and a tabular specification of an FSM, called MTM (Mode Transition Machine), describes the mode transition rules for the SDF graph. We call it to MTM-SDF model which is classified as multi-mode dataflow models in the dissertation. It assumes that an application has a finite number of behaviors (or modes) and each behavior (mode) is represented by an SDF graph. It enables us to perform compile-time scheduling of each graph to maximize the throughput varying the number of allocated processors, and store the scheduling information. Also, a multiprocessor scheduling technique is proposed for a multi-mode dataflow graph. While there exist several scheduling techniques for multi-mode dataflow models, no one allows task migration between modes. By observing that the resource requirement can be additionally reduced if task migration is allowed, we propose a multiprocessor scheduling technique of a multi-mode dataflow graph considering task migration between modes. Based on a genetic algorithm, the proposed technique schedules all SDF graphs in all modes simultaneously to minimize the resource requirement. To satisfy the throughput constraint, the proposed technique calculates the actual throughput requirement of each mode and the output buffer size for tolerating throughput jitter. For the specified task graph and scheduling results, the CIC translator generates parallelized code for the target architecture. Therefore the CIC translator is extended to support extended features of the CIC task model. In application-level, it is extended to support multiprocessor code generation for an MTM-SDF graph considering the given static scheduling results. Also, multiprocessor code generation of four different scheduling policies are supported for an MTM-SDF graph: fully-static, self-timed, static-assignment, and fully-dynamic. In system-level, the CIC translator is extended to support code generation for implementation of system request APIs and data structures for the static scheduling results and configurable task parameters. Through preliminary experiments with a multi-mode multimedia terminal example, the viability of the proposed methodology is verified.Chapter 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Motivation 1 1.2 Contribution 7 1.3 Dissertation organization 9 Chapter 2 Background 10 2.1 Related work 10 2.1.1 Compiler-based approach 10 2.1.2 Language-based approach 11 2.1.3 Model-based approach 15 2.2 HOPES framework 19 2.3 Common Intermediate Code (CIC) Model 21 Chapter 3 Dynamic Behavior Specification 26 3.1 Problem definition 26 3.1.1 System-level dynamic behavior 26 3.1.2 Application-level dynamic behavior 27 3.2 Related work 28 3.3 Motivational example 31 3.4 Control task specification for system-level dynamism 33 3.4.1 Internal specification 33 3.4.2 Action scripts 38 3.5 MTM-SDF specification for application-level dynamism 44 3.5.1 MTM specification 44 3.5.2 Task graph specification 45 3.5.3 Execution semantic of an MTM-SDF graph 46 Chapter 4 Multiprocessor Scheduling of an Multi-mode Dataflow Graph 50 4.1 Related work 51 4.2 Motivational example 56 4.2.1 Throughput requirement calculation considering mode transition delay 56 4.2.2 Task migration between mode transition 58 4.3 Problem definition 61 4.4 Throughput requirement analysis 65 4.4.1 Mode transition delay 66 4.4.2 Arrival curves of the output buffer 70 4.4.3 Buffer size determination 71 4.4.4 Throughput requirement analysis 73 4.5 Proposed MMDF scheduling framework 75 4.5.1 Optimization problem 75 4.5.2 GA configuration 76 4.5.3 Fitness function 78 4.5.4 Local optimization technique 79 4.6 Experimental results 81 4.6.1 MMDF scheduling technique 83 4.6.2 Scalability of the Proposed Framework 88 Chapter 5 Multiprocessor Code Generation for the Extended CIC Model 89 5.1 CIC translator 89 5.2 Code generation for application-level dynamism 91 5.2.1 Function call-style code generation (fully-static, self-timed) 94 5.2.2 Thread-style code generation (static-assignment, fully-dynamic) 98 5.3 Code generation for system-level dynamism 101 5.4 Experimental results 105 Chapter 6 Conclusion and Future Work 107 Bibliography 109 초록 125Docto