Handling IoT platform heterogeneity with COISA, a compact OpenISA virtual platform

Abstract

In face of the high number of different hardware platforms we need to program with Internet-of-Things (IoT), virtual machines (VMs) pose as a promising technology to allow a program once, deploy everywhere strategy. Unfortunately, existing VMs are either too heavy or use a stripped-down version to work on resource-constrained IoT devices. We present COISA, a compact virtual platform that relies on OpenISA, an instruction set architecture (ISA) that strives for easy emulation, to allow a single program to be deployed on many platforms, including tiny microcontrollers. By exploring the benefits of using a concrete ISA as our VM language, our experimental results indicate that COISA is easily portable and is capable of running unmodified guest applications in highly heterogeneous host platforms, including one with only 2 kB of RAM. For time-critical IoT applications on constrained platforms where extracting performance is of paramount importance, we propose the use of cloud-assisted translations, which employ static binary translation to deliver a binary fully converted to the native ISA used in the IoT device.HANDLING IOT PLATFORM HETEROGENEITY WITH COISA Our previous experience with ISA emulation and design [9,33,34] have shown us that a clean ISA, similar to MIPS, allows us to build a high-performance emulator capable of emulating guest

Function Merging by Sequence Alignment

“…In such constrained scenarios, reducing the code size is essential [3], [4], [5], [6], [7]. Unfortunately, production compilers offer little help beyond dead-code elimination or merging identical functions [8], [9], [10].…”

Leveraging Constrained Devices for Custom Code Execution in the Internet of Things

“…As the studied tools were not compatible with Class 2 devices, we developed LibMiletusCOISA (LMC) 1 , a framework that enables cross-platform code execution on constrained IoT devices by combining a compact virtual machine (Constrained OpenISA (COISA) [Auler et al 2017]) with a lean event handling mechanism (LibMiletus [MotorolaMobilityLLC 2019]). Figure 1 shows an overview of the main components of the LMC framework and how they are connected.…”

Fog Computing on Constrained Devices: Paving the Way for the Future IoT

“…One way to allow developers to implement a program once and deploy it to many different hardware platforms is the use of Virtual Machines (VMs), as many lean VMs are compatible with constrained devices and thus enable them to execute custom applications. We refer the reader to Auler et al [30] for a review on this topic. We can consider a use case where there is an IoT device that is equipped with a capture instrument, like a microphone, or a sensor that periodically measures an environmental variable such as temperature, humidity, or luminosity.…”