Two articles that were submitted to a Journal of Systems Architecture Special Issue on High-performance and Real-time Embedded Systems have now appeared online. The first article is called “T-CREST: Time-predictable Multi-Core Architecture for Embedded Systems” and summarizes the work done in the recently concluded FP7 STREP project T-CREST, where me and my students worked on time-predictable memory controllers.
The second article is entitled “Dataflow Formalisation of Real-Time Streaming Applications on a Composable and Predictable Multi-Processor SOC” and shows how data-flow graphs can be used to model streaming applications mapped to the CompSoc platform and predict its minimum throughput. The basic idea is to start from a data-flow graph of the application and add additional nodes and edges that capture the mapping and timing behavior of all hardware components software libraries, and schedulers in the system. The approach is verified by comparing the predicted performance to the actual performance of an application executing on a CompSoc instance on an FPGA. The article clearly demonstrates the potential of modeling systems in which the behavior of all hardware and software components are known.