Communication-aware allocation and scheduling framework for stream-oriented multi-processor systems-on-chip

This paper proposes a complete allocation and scheduling framework, where an MPSoC virtual platform is used to accurately derive input parameters, validate abstract models of system components and assess constraint satisfaction and objective function optimization. The optimizer implements an efficient and exact approach to allocation and scheduling based on problem decomposition. The allocation subproblem is solved through integer programming while the scheduling one through constraint programming. The two solvers can interact by means of no-good generation, thus building an iterative procedure which has been proven to converge to the optimal solution. Experimental results show significant speedups w.r.t. pure IP and CP exact solution strategies as well as high accuracy with respect to cycle accurate functional simulation. A case study further demonstrates the practical viability of our framework for real-life systems and applications.

1. Introduction

Forthcoming multi-processor System-on-Chip (MPSoC) platforms with dozens of embedded processors will require a new tool flow for efficient software development and validation. In particular, the integration of very powerful optimization tools is expected to overcome the limitations of ad-hoc approaches to the traditional task-to-architecture mapping problem, and to provide efficient solutions in reasonable time.