Multi-Core Execution of Hard Real-Time Applications Supporting Analysability

• Start date: 01.11.2007
• End date: 31.10.2010
• Funded by: EC (European Community)
• Local head of project: Prof. Dr. Theo Ungerer
• Local scientists: Florian Kluge, Jörg Mische
• External scientists / cooperations: Mateo Valero, Francisco J. Cazorla, Eduardo Quinones, Marco Paolieri (Barcelona Supercomputer Center, Spanien),  Pascal Sainrat, Christine Rochange, Hugues Cassé (Université Paul Sabatier, Toulouse, France),  Zlatko Petrov, Frantisek Mikulu, Lukas Kellner (Honeywell, Prag und Brno, Czech Republic),  Guillem Bernat, Antoine Colin, Michael Houston (Rapita Systems Ltd., UK)

 

Abstract

Providing higher performance than what state-of-the-art embedded processors can deliver today will increase safety, comfort, number and quality of services, lower emissions and fuel demands of automotive, aerospace, space, and construction machinery applications. Multi-core processors are increasingly being considered as the solution to achieve an increased processor performance, while maintaining low chip costs and low power consumption. However, current trends in mainstream multi-core processor design result in processors with certainly reduced average execution times, but typically with unpredictable and unanalysable (or extremely pessimistic) worst case behaviour that deems them unusable in the domain of safety-related real-time embedded systems.

The MERASA project will develop multi-core processor designs (from 2 to 16 cores) for hard real-time embedded systems hand in hand with timing analysis techniques and tools to guarantee the analysability and predictability regarding timing of every single feature provided by the processor. Design exploration activities will be performed in conjunction with the timing analysis tools. The project will address both static WCET analysis tools (the OTAWA toolset) as well as hybrid measurement-based tools (RapiTime) and their interoperability. It will also develop system-level software with predictable timing performance.

To constrain production costs and technology integration risks, we investigate hardware-based real-time scheduling solutions that empower the same multi-core processor to handle hard, soft, and non real-time tasks on different cores. The developed hardware/software techniques will be evaluated by application studies from aerospace, automotive, and construction-machinery areas performed by selected industrial partners.

Zur MERASA-Website

Publications

2011

• RTOS Support for Execution of Parallelized Hard Real-Time Tasks on the MERASA Multi-Core Processor
  Julian Wolf, Mike Gerdes, Florian Kluge, Sascha Uhrig, Jörg Mische, Stefan Metzlaff, Christine Rochange, Hugues Cassé, Pascal Sainrat, and Theo Ungerer 
  International Journal of Computer Systems, Science & Engineering (CSSE), ISSN 0267 6192, Vol. 26, No. 6
• A Software-Pipelined Approach to Multicore Execution of Timing Predictable Multi-threaded Hard Real-Time Tasks
  Marco Paolieri, Eduardo Quinones, Francisco J. Cazorla, Julian Wolf, Theo Ungerer, Sascha Uhrig, Zlatko Petrov 
  Proceedings of the 14th IEEE International Symposium on Object/component/service-oriented Real-time distributed computing (ISORC 2011)

2010

• Final System-Level Software for the MERASA Processor 
  Julian Wolf, Florian Kluge, Irakli Guliashvili 
  Technical Report, Institute of Computer Science, University of Augsburg, October 2010 
  2010-08
• MERASA: Multi-Core Execution of Hard Real-Time Applications Supporting Analysability 
  Theo Ungerer, Francisco J. Cazorla, Pascal Sainrat, Guillem Bernat, Zlatko Petrov, Hugues Cassé, Christine Rochange, Eduardo Quinones, Sascha Uhrig, Mike Gerdes, Irakli Guliashvili, Michael Houston, Florian Kluge, Stefan Metzlaff, Jörg Mische, Marco Paolieri, Julian Wolf 
  IEEE Micro 2010, Special Issue on European Multicore Processing Projects, Vol. 30 No. 5, Sept. / Oct. 2010
• WCET Analysis of a Parallel 3D Multigrid Solver Executed on the MERASA Multi-core 
  Christine Rochange, Armelle Bonenfant, Pascal Sainrat, Mike Gerdes, Julian Wolf, Theo Ungerer, Zlatko Petrov, and Frantisek Mikulu 
  10th Int’l Workshop on Worst-Case Execution-Time Analysis in conjunction with the 22nd Euromicro Int’l Conference on Real-Time Systems
• RTOS Support for Parallel Execution of Hard Real-Time Applications on the MERASA Multi-Core Processor
  Julian Wolf, Mike Gerdes, Florian Kluge, Sascha Uhrig, Jörg Mische, Stefan Metzlaff, Christine Rochange, Hugues Cassé, Pascal Sainrat, and Theo Ungerer 
  The 13th IEEE International Symposium on Object/component/service-oriented Real-time distributed computing (ISORC 2010)

2009

• System-Level Software for a Multi-Core MERASA Processor
  Florian Kluge, Julian Wolf 
  Technical Report, Institute of Computer Science, University of Augsburg, October 2009 
  2009-17

2008

• Refined System-Level Software for a Single-Core MERASA Processor 
  Florian Kluge, Julian Wolf 
  Technical Report, Institute of Computer Science, University of Augsburg, October 2008 
  2008-15
• Multi-Core Architectures for Hard Real-Time Applications 
  Mike Gerdes, Julian Wolf, Ji Zhang, Sascha Uhrig, Theo Ungerer 
  ACACES 2008 Poster Abstracts
• Basic System-Level Software for a Single-Core MERASA Processor 
  Florian Kluge, Julian Wolf 
  Technical Report, Institute of Computer Science, University of Augsburg, April 2008 
  2008-06