2,846 research outputs found
Efficient Simulation of Structural Faults for the Reliability Evaluation at System-Level
In recent technology nodes, reliability is considered a part of the standard design ¿ow at all levels of embedded system design. While techniques that use only low-level models at gate- and register transfer-level offer high accuracy, they are too inefficient to consider the overall application of the embedded system. Multi-level models with high abstraction are essential to efficiently evaluate the impact of physical defects on the system. This paper provides a methodology that leverages state-of-the-art techniques for efficient fault simulation of structural faults together with transaction-level modeling. This way it is possible to accurately evaluate the impact of the faults on the entire hardware/software system. A case study of a system consisting of hardware and software for image compression and data encryption is presented and the method is compared to a standard gate/RT mixed-level approac
BEEBS: Open Benchmarks for Energy Measurements on Embedded Platforms
This paper presents and justifies an open benchmark suite named BEEBS,
targeted at evaluating the energy consumption of embedded processors.
We explore the possible sources of energy consumption, then select individual
benchmarks from contemporary suites to cover these areas. Version one of BEEBS
is presented here and contains 10 benchmarks that cover a wide range of typical
embedded applications. The benchmark suite is portable across diverse
architectures and is freely available.
The benchmark suite is extensively evaluated, and the properties of its
constituent programs are analysed. Using real hardware platforms we show case
examples which illustrate the difference in power dissipation between three
processor architectures and their related ISAs. We observe significant
differences in the average instruction dissipation between the architectures of
4.4x, specifically 170uW/MHz (ARM Cortex-M0), 65uW/MHz (Adapteva Epiphany) and
88uW/MHz (XMOS XS1-L1)
X-SRAM: Enabling In-Memory Boolean Computations in CMOS Static Random Access Memories
Silicon-based Static Random Access Memories (SRAM) and digital Boolean logic
have been the workhorse of the state-of-art computing platforms. Despite
tremendous strides in scaling the ubiquitous metal-oxide-semiconductor
transistor, the underlying \textit{von-Neumann} computing architecture has
remained unchanged. The limited throughput and energy-efficiency of the
state-of-art computing systems, to a large extent, results from the well-known
\textit{von-Neumann bottleneck}. The energy and throughput inefficiency of the
von-Neumann machines have been accentuated in recent times due to the present
emphasis on data-intensive applications like artificial intelligence, machine
learning \textit{etc}. A possible approach towards mitigating the overhead
associated with the von-Neumann bottleneck is to enable \textit{in-memory}
Boolean computations. In this manuscript, we present an augmented version of
the conventional SRAM bit-cells, called \textit{the X-SRAM}, with the ability
to perform in-memory, vector Boolean computations, in addition to the usual
memory storage operations. We propose at least six different schemes for
enabling in-memory vector computations including NAND, NOR, IMP (implication),
XOR logic gates with respect to different bit-cell topologies the 8T cell
and the 8T Differential cell. In addition, we also present a novel
\textit{`read-compute-store'} scheme, wherein the computed Boolean function can
be directly stored in the memory without the need of latching the data and
carrying out a subsequent write operation. The feasibility of the proposed
schemes has been verified using predictive transistor models and Monte-Carlo
variation analysis.Comment: This article has been accepted in a future issue of IEEE Transactions
on Circuits and Systems-I: Regular Paper
Homomorphic Data Isolation for Hardware Trojan Protection
The interest in homomorphic encryption/decryption is increasing due to its
excellent security properties and operating facilities. It allows operating on
data without revealing its content. In this work, we suggest using homomorphism
for Hardware Trojan protection. We implement two partial homomorphic designs
based on ElGamal encryption/decryption scheme. The first design is a
multiplicative homomorphic, whereas the second one is an additive homomorphic.
We implement the proposed designs on a low-cost Xilinx Spartan-6 FPGA. Area
utilization, delay, and power consumption are reported for both designs.
Furthermore, we introduce a dual-circuit design that combines the two earlier
designs using resource sharing in order to have minimum area cost. Experimental
results show that our dual-circuit design saves 35% of the logic resources
compared to a regular design without resource sharing. The saving in power
consumption is 20%, whereas the number of cycles needed remains almost the sam
A Survey of Techniques For Improving Energy Efficiency in Embedded Computing Systems
Recent technological advances have greatly improved the performance and
features of embedded systems. With the number of just mobile devices now
reaching nearly equal to the population of earth, embedded systems have truly
become ubiquitous. These trends, however, have also made the task of managing
their power consumption extremely challenging. In recent years, several
techniques have been proposed to address this issue. In this paper, we survey
the techniques for managing power consumption of embedded systems. We discuss
the need of power management and provide a classification of the techniques on
several important parameters to highlight their similarities and differences.
This paper is intended to help the researchers and application-developers in
gaining insights into the working of power management techniques and designing
even more efficient high-performance embedded systems of tomorrow
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