MarciaTesta: An Automatic Generator of Test Programs for Microprocessors' Data Caches

SBST (Software Based Self-Testing) is an effective solution for in-system testing of SoCs without any additional hardware requirement. SBST is particularly suited for embedded blocks with limited accessibility, such as cache memories. Several methodologies have been proposed to properly adapt existing March algorithms to test cache memories. Unfortunately they all leave the test engineers the task of manually coding them into the specific Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) of the target microprocessor. We propose an EDA tool for the automatic generation of assembly cache test program for a specific architectur

Validation & Verification of an EDA automated synthesis tool

Reliability and correctness are two mandatory features for automated synthesis tools. To reach the goals several campaigns of Validation and Verification (V&V) are needed. The paper presents the extensive efforts set up to prove the correctness of a newly developed EDA automated synthesis tool. The target tool, MarciaTesta, is a multi-platform automatic generator of test programs for microprocessors' caches. Getting in input the selected March Test and some architectural details about the target cache memory, the tool automatically generates the assembly level program to be run as Software Based Self-Testing (SBST). The equivalence between the original March Test, the automatically generated Assembly program, and the intermediate C/C++ program have been proved resorting to sophisticated logging mechanisms. A set of proved libraries has been generated and extensively used during the tool development. A detailed analysis of the lessons learned is reporte

An area-efficient 2-D convolution implementation on FPGA for space applications

The 2-D Convolution is an algorithm widely used in image and video processing. Although its computation is simple, its implementation requires a high computational power and an intensive use of memory. Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) architectures were proposed to accelerate calculations of 2-D Convolution and the use of buffers implemented on FPGAs are used to avoid direct memory access. In this paper we present an implementation of the 2-D Convolution algorithm on a FPGA architecture designed to support this operation in space applications. This proposed solution dramatically decreases the area needed keeping good performance, making it appropriate for embedded systems in critical space application

AIDI: An adaptive image denoising FPGA-based IP-core for real-time applications

The presence of noise in images can significantly impact the performances of digital image processing and computer vision algorithms. Thus, it should be removed to improve the robustness of the entire processing flow. The noise estimation in an image is also a key factor, since, to be more effective, algorithms and denoising filters should be tuned to the actual level of noise. Moreover, the complexity of these algorithms brings a new challenge in real-time image processing applications, requiring high computing capacity. In this context, hardware acceleration is crucial, and Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) best fit the growing demand of computational capabilities. This paper presents an Adaptive Image Denoising IP-core (AIDI) for real-time applications. The core first estimates the level of noise in the input image, then applies an adaptive Gaussian smoothing filter to remove the estimated noise. The filtering parameters are computed on-the-fly, adapting them to the level of noise in the image, and pixel by pixel, to preserve image information (e.g., edges or corners). The FPGA-based architecture is presented, highlighting its improvements w.r.t. a standard static filtering approac

Participatory research for sustainable agriculture: the case of the Italian agroecological rice network

Since the Green Revolution, worldwide agriculture has been characterized by a typical top – down approach. The degree of autonomy, creativity, and responsibility of farmers has been limited by the continuous external inputs of chemicals, machinery, advice, subsidies and knowledge. The issue of sustainability has brought complexity and uncertainty to this mainly linear process of innovation, steering agriculture toward alternative models. Agroecology represents an innovative paradigm of agriculture in which external inputs are minimized, and the assets of the farm are greatly valued. Agroecological production relies on the farmers ’ direct management of resources and on their active engagement in the agricultural knowledge and innovation system. This paper focuses on the experience of a group of farmers, scientists, public officials, and managers of private companies who are experimenting with agroecology in rice production in one of the most intensively farmed, profitable and environmentally sensitive areas of Italy. The partnership regularly comes together to discuss agricultural techniques and results, needs, and paths of innovation; in addition, it stimulates and takes part in research projects, following a participatory process based on co-learning and mutual responsibility. By using ethnographic methods such as direct observations and in-depth interviews, our work may contribute to understanding the role of participatory research in sustainable agriculture and what makes for good participation

LES and Hybrid RANS/LES turbulence modelling in unstructured finite volume code and applications to nuclear reactor fuel bundle

Rod bundle is a typical constitutive element of a very wide range of nuclear reactor designs. This thesis describes the investigation of such geometry with wall-resolved Large Eddy Simulation (LES). In order to alleviate the mesh constraint, imposed by the near wall resolution, the usage of embedded refinements and polyhedral meshes is analysed firstly with a inviscid laminar case (Taylor Green vortices) and secondly with a fully turbulent case (channel flow only with embedded refinement). The inviscid test case shows that the addition of embedded refinements decreases the conservation properties of the code. Indeed the accuracy decreases from second order in a structured conformal mesh, to something in between first and second order depending on the quality of the unstructured mesh. Better results are obtained when the interface between refined and coarse areas presents a more regular and structured pattern, reducing the generation of skewed and stretched cells. The channel flow simulation shows that the Reynolds stresses, of some embedded refined meshes, are affected by spurious oscillations. Surprisingly this effect is present in the unstructured meshes with the best orthogonal properties. Indeed analysis of Reynolds stress budgets shows that terms, where the gradient in the wall normal direction is dominant, have a largely oscillatory behaviour. The cause of the problem is attributed to the convective term and in particular in the method used for the gradient reconstruction. As a consequence of these contradictory signs between the inviscid and the fully turbulent cases, the rod bundle test case is analysed using a conventional body fitted multiblock mesh. Two different Reynolds numbers are investigated reporting Reynolds stresses and budgets. The flow is characterised by an energetic and almost periodic azimuthal flow pulsation in the gap region between adjacent sub-channels, which makes turbulent quantities largely different from those in plane channel and pipes and enhances mixing. Experiments found that a constant Strouhal number, with the variation of the Reynolds number, characterises the phenomenon. The frequency analysis finds that present simulations are distinguished by three dominant frequencies, the first in agreement with the experimental value and two higher ones, which might be due to the correlation of the azimuthal velocity in the streamwise direction. Several passive temperature fields are added at the simulations in order to study the effects of the variation of the Prandtl number and the change in boundary conditions (Neumann and Dirichlet). A simplified case where an imbalance of the scalar between adjacent sub-channels is also investigated in order to evaluate the variation of the heat fluxes with respect to the homogeneous case. An alternative solution, to reduce the mesh constraint imposed by the wall, is to hybridize LES with RANS. The main achievement of this work is to integrate the heat transfer modelling to the already existing model for the dynamic part. Further investigations of the blending function, used to merge the two velocity fields, are carried out in conjunction with a study of the model dependency on the mesh resolution. The validation is performed on a fully developed channel flow at different Reynolds numbers and with constant wall heat flux. On coarse meshes the model shows an improvement of the results for both thermal and hydraulic parts with respect to a standard LES. On refined meshes, suitable for wall-resolved LES, the model suffers from a problem of double counting of modelled Reynolds stresses and heat fluxes because the RANS contribution does not naturally disappear as the mesh resolution increases.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceEPSRCGBUnited Kingdo

SA-FEMIP: A Self-Adaptive Features Extractor and Matcher IP-Core Based on Partially Reconfigurable FPGAs for Space Applications

Video-based navigation (VBN) is increasingly used in space applications to enable autonomous entry, descent, and landing of aircrafts. VBN algorithms require real-time performances and high computational capabilities, especially to perform features extraction and matching (FEM). In this context, field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) can be employed as efficient hardware accelerators. This paper proposes an improved FPGA-based FEM module. Online self-adaptation of the parameters of both the image noise filter and the features extraction algorithm is adopted to improve the algorithm robustness. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed self-adaptive module. It introduces a marginal resource overhead and no timing performance degradation when compared with the reference state-of-the-art architecture