This dissertation addresses the problem of designing hard real-time streaming systems running a set of parallel streaming programs in an automated way such that the programs provably meet their... Show moreThis dissertation addresses the problem of designing hard real-time streaming systems running a set of parallel streaming programs in an automated way such that the programs provably meet their timing requirements. A scheduling framework is proposed with which it is analytically proven that any streaming program, modeled as an acyclic Cyclo-Static Dataflow (CSDF) graph, can be executed as a set of real-time periodic tasks. The proposed framework computes the parameters of the periodic tasks corresponding to the graph actors and the minimum buffer sizes of the communication channels such that a valid periodic schedule is guaranteed to exist. In order to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheduling framework, a system-level design flow that incorporates the scheduling framework is proposed. This proposed design flow accepts, as input, algorithmic sequential specifications of streaming programs, and then applies a set of systematic and automated steps that produce, as output, the final system implementation, which provably meets the timing requirements of the programs. The final system implementation consists of the parallelized versions of the input streaming programs together with the hardware needed to run them. The proposed scheduling framework and design flow are evaluated through a set of experiments. These experiments illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheduling framework and design flow. Show less
A system-level design methodology such as Daedalus provides designers with a forward synthesis flow for automated design, programming, and implementation of multiprocessor systems-on-chip. Daedalus... Show moreA system-level design methodology such as Daedalus provides designers with a forward synthesis flow for automated design, programming, and implementation of multiprocessor systems-on-chip. Daedalus employs the polyhedral process network model of computation to represent applications. These networks are automatically derived from sequential C code. A forward synthesis flow greatly increases designer productivity. Still, the designer needs to perform a time-consuming forward synthesis step to learn if a network satisfies his performance constraints. Furthermore, it is not trivial to select a set of transformations and transformation parameters for a network such that performance requirements are met. A forward synthesis flow thus solves only part of a design problem, as it does not provide fast feedback on the transformations a designer should apply to meet his performance constraints. This dissertation intro duces different performance estimation techniques for polyhedral process networks. The most promising technique is the profiling-based cprof technique that works directly on the sequential application code. This makes cprof an easy-to-use, robust, and fast technique, without the need to derive a polyhedral process network. This dissertation then discusses four transformations and analyzes factors that affect the efficacy of each transformation. Show less
This dissertation introduces new design methodology for automated design, programming, and implementation of multiprocessor systems-on-chip (MPSoCs) starting at a high level of abstraction. The... Show moreThis dissertation introduces new design methodology for automated design, programming, and implementation of multiprocessor systems-on-chip (MPSoCs) starting at a high level of abstraction. The proposed methodology offers a fully integrated tool-flow for very fast exploration and implementation of alternative MPSoCs, where design space exploration, system-level synthesis, application mapping, and system prototyping of MPSoCs are highly automated. The main idea is starting from a functional specification of an application and a description of an MPSoC at system level, to refine and translate them to lower register transfer level (RTL) descriptions in a systematic and automated way. This is achieved by applying a model-driven approach which exploits the platform-based design concept. In particular, to model an application, we use the Kahn Process Network (KPN) model of computation, which has proved to be well suited for specifying streaming applications in a parallel form. In addition, we have devised a platform model which allows for building MPSoCs in a systematic and automated way that execute KPNs efficiently. We use a mapping model to express the relation between the processes and the communication channels in the application (KPN) and the processing and memory components of the platform. Show less
