Operational mode exploration for reconfigurable systems with multiple applications

Abstract

Modern embedded systems incorporate multiple applications that run on the same execution platform. However, due to limited resources and other constraints, not all the combinations of applications may run concurrently. This paper tackles the problem of determining which combinations of applications can run on a given hardware architecture without violating given constraints, thus creating feasible operational modes of the system. The architecture itself may include standard processors for software implementation of applications and dynamically (partially) reconfigurable hardware resources, which enable dynamic sharing of the resource in different operational modes. The paper describes the models, theoretical results, and the mode exploration algorithm to perform this task. Here, the specification is symbolically encoded so that the feasibility of modes can be tested by applying a SAT solver. In the experiment, we demonstrate how to apply our approach to build a selforganizing smart camera framework.

IVaM: Implicit variant modeling and management for automotive embedded systems

“…In case of variants as well as for multi-mode systems (as in [14]), however, this is not the case anymore. As we will introduce next, we start rather from an overspecification of many application variants of which not all must be or are allowed to be implemented in each configuration of a car.…”

“…Moreover, we also want to integrate non-functional constraints directly into the modeling, cf. [12,14].…”

“…Thus, they do not integrate any information about possible functional variants. One possible extension for these approaches are related to adaptive computing and allow to model multi-mode systems [14], but still has several limitations in conjunction to the used hardware, e. g., reconfigurable devices. Moreover, this approach enables to extract all possible and valid manifestations of a given functional specification, including multiple applications, for a given architecture, e. g., it determines all viable operational modes of the underlying architecture.…”

Assessing the functional feasibility of variability-intensive data flow-oriented systems

“…Some other approaches try to handle some limited variability in functional specifications (e.g. optional task, alternative tasks, variable data) (as multiple scenarios [20,25] or multi-modes systems [18,26]), but they do not manage platform variability. Some others try to handle some limited variability in platforms (e.g.…”

“…Current approaches [15,16,23] assess functional feasibility of constrained data-flow-oriented embedded systems, but do not capture nor manage variability at both levels. Some Ad hoc techniques are trying to handle either platform variability (as reconfigurable architectures [21,22] [19]) or functional variability (as multiple scenarios [20,25] or multi-modes systems [18,26]). On the other hand, approaches tackling both kinds of variability [12] are focusing on optimal platform selections to implement multiple functional variants at a lower cost, but they do not manage structural and behavioral properties (e.g.…”