A Broadcast-Enabled Sensing System for Embedded Multi-core Processors

Abstract

Contemporary multi-core architectures deployed in embedded systems are expected to function near the operational limits of temperature, voltage, and device wear-out. To date, most on-chip sensing systems have been designed to collect and use sensor information for these parameters locally. In this paper, a new sensing system to enhance multi-core dependability which supports both the local and global distribution of sensing data in embedded processors is considered. The benefit of the new sensing architecture is verified using the broadcast of microarchitectural parameter signatures which can be used to identify impending voltage droops. Low-latency broadcasts are supported for a range of sensor data transfer rates. Up to a 9% performance improvement for a 16-core system is determined via the use of the distributed voltage droop sensor information (5.4% on average). The entire sensing system, including broadcasting resources, requires about 2.6% of multi-core area.

T-L Plane Abstraction-Based Energy-Efficient Real-Time Scheduling for Multi-Core Wireless Sensors

“…Recent technological improvements rendered multi-core processors as a viable and cost-effective option for coping with the computation challenges for sensor nodes [ 1 ]. Hence, studies on multi-core sensor nodes have been actively conducted recently [ 2 , 3 , 4 ].…”

Test standards reuse for structured and cost-efficient dependability management of system-on-chips

“…Since dependability instruments usually require low bandwidth, the instruments' data in this work are time-multiplexed. However, such ringbased networks do not scale well with the increasing number of instruments [Zha14b].…”

“…Most dedicated dependability instrument networks have been designed to incur a small area footprint [Zha14b], [Itu12] and [Gua10a]. Area cost minimization is essential for the adoption of a non-functional network.…”

“…ring topology with Time Division Multiplexed (TDM) routers [Sar14]. However, as we discussed in chapter 5, a ring topology hinders the scalability of a dependability network [Zha14b].…”