Throughput propagation in constraint-based design space exploration for mixed-criticality systems

When designing complex mixed-critical systems on multiprocessor platforms, a huge number of design alternatives has to be evaluated. Therefore, there is a need for tools which systematically find and analyze the ample alternatives and identify solutions that satisfy the design constraints. The recently proposed design space exploration (DSE) tool DeSyDe uses constraint programming (CP) to find implementations with performance guarantees for multiple applications with potentially mixed-critical design constraints on a shared platform. A key component of the DeSyDe tool is its throughput analysis component, called a throughput propagator in the context of CP. The throughput propagator guides the exploration by evaluating each design decision and is therefore executed excessively throughout the exploration. This paper presents two throughput propagators based on different analysis methods for DeSyDe. Their performance is evaluated in a range of experiments with six different application graphs, heterogeneous platform models and mixed-critical design constraints. The results suggest that the MCR throughput propagator is more efficient.QC 20170609</p