Year: 2017

Paper Accepted at MOMA3N

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A paper entitled “Pain-mitigation Techniques for Model-based Engineering using Domain-specific Languages” has been accepted at the Special Session on Model Management And Analytics (MOMA3N), a workshop co-located with MODELSWARD 2018. This paper is my first publication related to my work at TNO-ESI, which focuses on model-based engineering (MBE), virtual prototyping, and domain-specific languages (DSLs).

This paper is an experience report from an investigation into how to mitigate the pains associated with a transition to a model-based design flow using DSLs. The contributions of the paper are: 1) a list of 14 pains related to MBE as a technology that is representative of our industrial partners designing high-tech systems in different domains, 2) a selected subset of six pains is positioned with respect to the state-of-the-practice, 3) practical experiences and pain-mitigation techniques from applying a model-based design process using DSLs to an industrial case study based on a Threat Ranking component of a Combat Management System, and 4) a list of three open issues that require further research.

Paper Accepted at DATE 2018

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Another paper written with my former colleagues at CISTER has been accepted. The paper is entitled “Mixed-criticality Scheduling with Memory Bandwith Regulation” and appear at DATE 2018. The paper considers the problem that existing schedulability analyses for mixed-criticality multi-core systems do not consider task interference in shared platform resources, such as memories, potentially making them optimistic and unsafe. We address this issue by formulating a schedulability analysis for mixed-criticality fixed-priority-scheduled multi-core systems using per-core memory access regulation. We also propose multiple heuristics for memory bandwidth allocation and task-to-core assignment. The analysis and heuristics are implemented in a tool and evaluated through extensive experiments.

Article Accepted in IEEE Transactions on Computers

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Anna Minaeva had an article entitled “Time-Triggered Co-Scheduling of Computation and Communication with Jitter Requirements” accepted in IEEE Transactions on Computers. The article considers the problem of efficiently co-scheduling task execution and communication in multi-core automotive platforms. Most existing works typically deal with zero-jitter scheduling, which results in lower resource utilization, but has lower memory requirements. In contrast, this article focuses on jitter-constrained scheduling that puts constraints on the tasks jitter, increasing schedulability over zero-jitter scheduling.

The contributions of this article are: 1) Integer Linear Programming and Satisfiability Modulo Theory model exploiting problem-specific information to reduce the formulations complexity to schedule small applications. 2) A heuristic approach, employing three levels of scheduling scaling to real-world use-cases with 10000 tasks and messages. 3) An experimental evaluation of the proposed approaches on a case-study and on synthetic data sets showing the efficiency of both zero-jitter and jitter-constrained scheduling. It shows that up to 28% higher resource utilization can be achieved by having up to 10 times longer computation time with relaxed jitter requirements.

Hazem Ali Defends Dissertation

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Today, Hazem Ali successfully defended his PhD dissertation entitled "Integrating Dataflow and Non-Dataflow Real-time Application Models on Multi-core Platforms" and became a doctor. The main contribution of the thesis is a design flow that integrates applications specified using two different application models, data-flow graphs and periodic real-time task sets, on a shared NoC-based multi-core platform. The committee recognized that the work was building bridges between two different communities in the world of real-time systems and that it was nice that the publications from the PhD work have been nicely integrated into a single design flow.

For those of you that are interested in a short summary of this work, please refer to his publication "Combining Dataflow Applications and Real-time Task Sets on Multi-core Platforms" accepted at the 2017 Workshop on Software and Compilers for Embedded Systems (SCOPES). Lastly, we wish Hazem the best of luck in his future career.

Paper Accepted at SCOPES 2017

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Hazem had a paper entitled “Combining Dataflow Applications and Real-time Task Sets on Multi-core Platforms” accepted at the 2017 Workshop on Software and Compilers for Embedded Systems (SCOPES). This paper is a short overview of his PhD dissertation, which will be defended in Porto on May 23, and explains an approach to map and schedule a multi-/many-core system containing both applications described as traditional real-time task sets and synchronous data-flow graphs. Hazem’s approach is to convert the data-flow graph into a periodic real-time task set to unify the models before mapping, which enables him to leverage existing real-time analysis techniques and schedulers. However, converting a complex data-flow graph into a periodic task set may result in a large number of tasks, resulting in long analysis times. To mitigate this problem, he proposes a slack-based merging algorithm that allows the number of tasks to be reduced by carefully sacrificing parallelism in the data-flow graph, subject to its latency and throughput constraints. Lastly, the resulting unified real-time task set is mapped to a multi-/many-core platform interconnected by a TDM NoC using a sensitive-path-first algorithm, which first allocates tasks derived from the original data-flow graph that have the highest impact on its execution and schedulability. It is also able to exploit parallelism in graph during mapping.

We hope you enjoy the paper and wish Hazem all the best for his upcoming defense.

Paper Accepted at ECRTS 2017

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Our paper “Mixed-criticality Scheduling with Dynamic Redistribution of Shared Cache” has been accepted at ECRTS 2017, marking the end of yet another succesful collaboration with my former colleagues at CISTER. The paper proposes an extension of Vestal’s model for mixed-criticality multi-core systems that 1) accounts for the per-task partitioning of the last-level cache, and 2) supports dynamic reassignment of cache portions initially reserved for lower-criticality tasks to the higher-criticality tasks when switching to high-criticality mode. A schedulability analysis based on partitioned EDF is presented that is aware of the cache resources assigned to each task and leverages the dynamic reconfiguration to improve schedulability. We also propose heuristics for partitioning the cache in low- and high-criticality mode. Experimental result indicate tangible improvements in schedulability compared to a baseline cache-aware arrangement where there is no redistribution of cache resources from low- to high-criticality tasks in the event of a mode change.

Paper Accepted at RTAS

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A paper entitled “Partitioning and Analysis of the Network-on-Chip on a COTS Many-Core Platform” was recently accepted for publication at RTAS. This paper was a collaboration with former colleagues at the CISTER Research Unit, as well as friends from MDH in Sweden. The paper addresses the issue of interference between applications in many-core platforms interconnected using rate-regulated Networks-on-Chip (NoC), such as the Kalray MPPA. The main contributions of the paper are 1) a partitioning strategy for reducing contention on the NoC, 2) an analysis technique to determine the Worst-Case Traversal Time of packages under the proposed strategy, and 3) a method to determine parameters for the NoCs rate regulators to get minimal WCTT and ensure that buffers never overflow. The benefits of the proposed approach is evaluated both using simulation and by experiments on a Kalray MPPA. Furthermore, an industrial case study from the automotive domain shows the tightness of the proposed analysis.