A dynamic power-aware partitioner with task migration for multicore embedded systems

Nowadays, a key design issue in embedded systems is how to reduce the power consumption, since batteries have a limited energy budget. For this purpose, several techniques such as Dynamic Voltage Scaling (DVS) or task migration can be used. DVS allows reducing power by selecting the optimal voltage supply, while task migration achieves this effect by balancing the workload among cores. This paper first analyzes the impact on energy due to task migration in multicore embedded systems with DVS capability and using the well-known Worst Fit (WF) partitioning heuristic. To reduce overhead, migrations are only performed at the time that a task arrives to and/or leaves the system and, in such a case, only one migration is allowed. The huge potential on energy saving due to task migration, leads us to propose a new dynamic partitioner, namely DP, that migrates tasks in a more efficient way than typical partitioners. Unlike WF, the proposed algorithm examines which is the optimal target core before allowing a migration. Experimental results show that DP can improve energy consumption in a factor up to 2.74 over the typical WF algorithm. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.This work was supported by Spanish CICYT under Grant TIN2009-14475-C04-01, and by Consolider-Ingenio under Grant CSD2006-00046.March Cabrelles, JL.; Sahuquillo Borrás, J.; Petit Martí, SV.; Hassan Mohamed, H.; Duato Marín, JF. (2011). A dynamic power-aware partitioner with task migration for multicore embedded systems. En Euro-Par 2011 Parallel Processing. Springer Verlag (Germany). 2011(6852):218-229. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-23400-2_21S21822920116852AlEnawy, T.A., Aydin, H.: Energy-Aware Task Allocation for Rate Monotonic Scheduling. In: Proceedings of the 11th Real Time on Embedded Technology and Applications Symposium, March 7-10, pp. 213–223. 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A Dynamic Power-Aware Partitioner with Real-Time Task Migration for Embedded Multicore Processors

[ES] Analizar el impacto de permitir que las tareas de tiempo real puedan migrar su ejecución de un core a otro, sobre el consumo en sistemas empotrados multicore.[EN] A major design issue in embedded systems is reducing the power consumption since batteries have a limited energy budget. For this purpose, several techniques such as Dynamic Voltage and Frequency Scaling (DVFS) or task migration are being used. DVFS circuitry allows reducing power by selecting the optimal voltage supply, while task migration achieves this effect by balancing the workload among cores. This work focuses on power-aware scheduling allowing task migration to reduce energy consumption in multicore embedded systems implementing DVFS capabilities. To address energy savings, the devised schedulers follow two main rules: migrations are allowed at specific points of time and only one task is allowed to migrate each time. Two algorithms have been proposed working under real-time constraints. The simpler algorithm, namely, Single Option Migration (SOM) only checks one target core before performing a migration. In contrast, the Multiple Option Migration (MOM) searches the optimal target core. In general, the MOM algorithm achieves better energy savings than the SOM algorithm, although differences are wider for a reduced number of cores and frequency/voltage levels. Moreover, the MOM algorithm reduces energy consumption as much as 40% over the typical Worst Fit (WF) strategy.March Cabrelles, JL. (2012). A Dynamic Power-Aware Partitioner with Real-Time Task Migration for Embedded Multicore Processors. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/29847Archivo delegad

Temperature, energy and performance: addressing embedded system challenges through fast cache simulation

Temperature, energy and performance are essential design considerations during the conception of modern digital systems. The work presented in this thesis focusses on three aspects that can be used to overcome these limitations. First an evaluation of the suitability of the dynamic application adaptation method is researched with the aim of using it to control the temperature of a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) device. Despite the use of an extremely adaptive custom JPEG encoder, it was determined that application adaptation alone is ineffective in an FPGA for thermal management. Next, a study is performed which aims to assess which components are principally responsible for the rise in temperatures in FPGAs. It was found that the external memory interface is a significant heat-source in FPGA-based embedded systems, and that device temperature correlates with CPU cache miss rate. The third and main aspect covered in this dissertation is the speeding up of CPU cache simulation. Single pass cache simulation is a tool that can be employed at design time to select a cache yielding acceptable temperature, system performance and energy consumption. Three Multiple cAche Simulators in Hardware (MASH) or in Software (MASS) are proposed for three cache replacement policies: MASH{lru} for the Least Recently Used (LRU) cache algorithm, MASH{fifo} for First In First Out (FIFO) and MASS{plrut} for Pseudo Least Recently Used tree (PLRUt). The former two are novel in that they are implemented in hardware and are respectively 53x and 11.10x faster than software counterparts. The PLRUt simulator presents for the first time an optimised hash table-based algorithm yielding a speedup of 1.93x over an unoptimised solution. All cache simulators employ cache properties specific to their replacement policies to improve simulator characteristics. Additionally, it is shown that the hardware (or MASH) simulators can be implemented in-system alongside an embedded system, allowing for the direct trace extraction and cache simulation from within an FPGA. Using in-system simulation, large speedups can be achieved as trace generation and multiple cache simulation happen at the same time at high frequencies