Philippe Bonnot

MORPHEUS: Heterogeneous Reconfigurable Computing

Reconfigurable architectures and NoC (network-on-chip) communication systems have introduced new research directions for technology and flexibility issues, which have been largely investigated in the last decades. Exploiting the flexibility of reconfigurable architectures, the run-time adap-tivity through run-time reconfiguration, opens a new area of research by considering dynamic reconfiguration. Since software parts of an embedded system can also be included into reconfigurable hardware by integration of an IP-based microcontroller, the reconfigurable architecture provides a flexible, multi-adaptive heterogeneous platform forHW/SW co-design. In this paper, we present the European integrated project MORPHEUS (1ST 027342). Its goal is to develop new heterogeneous reconfigurable SoCs with various sizes of reconfiguration granularity and to provide an integrated toolset of spatial and sequential design that can be used for mapping and execution of the target applications. Additionally a NoC approach is included in order to demonstrate the mentioned benefits and scalability for actual and future SoC design. The power of this approach will be demonstrated with four applications from the industrial environment.

Reliability challenges of real-time systems in forthcoming technology nodes

Forthcoming technology nodes are posing major challenges on the manufacturing of reliable (real-time) systems: process variations, accelerated degradation aging, as well as external and internal noise are key examples. This paper focuses on real-time systems reliability and analyzes the state-of-the-art and the emerging reliability bottlenecks from three different perspectives: technology, circuit/IP and full system.

MORPHEUS: A heterogeneous dynamically reconfigurable platform for designing highly complex embedded systems

Recently, system designers are facing the challenge of developing systems that have diverse features, are more complex and more powerful, with less power consumption and reduced time to market. These contradictory constraints have forced technology providers to pursue design solutions that will allow design teams to meet the above design targets. In that respect, this paper introduces an innovative technology platform, called MORPHEUS, which intents to provide complete design framework for dealing with the aforementioned challenges. MORPHEUS consists of a state of the art architecture that encompasses heterogeneous reconfigurable accelerators for implementing on the same hardware architecture applications with varying characteristics and a tool chain that, through a software oriented approach, eases the implementation of highly complex applications with heterogeneous characteristics. The proposed approach has been tested and evaluated through state of the art cases studies borrowed from complementary application domains.

Towards improved survivability in safety-critical systems

Performance demand of Critical Real-Time Embedded (CRTE) systems implementing safety-related system features grows at an exponential rate. Only modern semiconductor technologies can satisfy CRTE systems performance needs efficiently. However, those technologies lead to high failure rates, thus lowering survivability of chips to unacceptable levels for CRTE systems. This paper presents SESACS architecture (Surviving Errors in SAfety-Critical Systems), a paradigm shift in the design of CRTE systems. SESACS is a new system design methodology consisting of three main components: (i) a multicore hardware/firmware platform capable of detecting and diagnosing hardware faults of any type with minimal impact on the worst-case execution time (WCET), recovering quickly from errors, and properly reconfiguring the system so that the resulting system exhibits a predictable and analyzable degradation in WCET; (ii) a set of analysis methods and tools to prove the timing correctness of the reconfigured system; and (iii) a white-box methodology and tools to prove the functional safety of the system and compliance with industry standards. This new design paradigm will deliver huge benefits to the embedded systems industry for several decades by enabling the use of more cost-effective multicore hardware platforms built on top of modern semiconductor technologies, thereby enabling higher performance, and reducing weight and power dissipation. This new paradigm will further extend the life of embedded systems, therefore, reducing warranty and early replacement costs.

Design of a HW/SW communication infrastructure for a heterogeneous reconfigurable processor

Reconfigurable architectures and NoC (Network-on- Chip) have introduced new research directions for technology and flexibility issues, which have been largely investigated in the last decades. Exploiting run-time adaptivity opens a new area of research by considering dynamic reconfiguration. In this paper, we present the architecture and associated development tools of an heterogeneous reconfigurable SoC focusing on the chosen communication infrastructure. The SOC integrates units of various sizes of reconfiguration granularity. The included NoC approach demonstrates the mentioned benefits and scalability for actual and future SoC design. On a reference CMOS090 implementation the described interconnect system works at the system reference frequency of 200 MHZ sustaining the required run-time bandwidth on a set of reference applications, at a price < 10% in area in power consumption with respect to the overall system.

The MORPHEUS Heterogeneous Dynamically Reconfigurable Platform

Reconfigurable computing offers a wide range of low cost and efficient solutions for embedded systems. The proper choice of the reconfigurable device, the granularity of its processing elements and its memory architecture highly depend on the type of application and their data flow. Existing solutions either offer fine grain FPGAs, which rely on a hardware synthesis flow and offer the maximum degree of flexibility, or coarser grain solutions, which are usually more suitable for a particular type of data flow and applications. In this paper, we present the MORPHEUS architecture, a versatile reconfigurable heterogeneous System-on-Chip targeting streaming applications. The presented architecture exploits different reconfigurable technologies at several computation granularities that efficiently address the different applications needs. In order to efficiently exploit the presented architecture, we implemented a complete software solution to map C applications to the reconfigurable architecture. In this paper, we describe the complete toolset and provide concrete use cases of the architecture.

System Level Design for Embedded Reconfigurable Systems Using MORPHEUS Platform

This paper presents a novel approach for designing embedded reconfigurable systems. It presents the MORPHEUS reconfigurable platform and associated toolset and how they can be used in practice for the development of advanced reconfigurable systems. The paper presents also implementation results from three different application domains and exhibits how MORPHEUS platform can be used for shortening the development time of such systems.

Cross-layer early reliability evaluation: Challenges and promises

Evaluation of computing systems reliability must be accurate enough to provide hints for the required fault protection mechanisms that will guarantee correctness of operation at acceptance costs. To be useful, reliability evaluation must be performed early enough in the design cycle when, however, the available details of the system are largely unknown. This inherent contradiction in terms: early vs. accurate, requires a cross-layer approach for reliability evaluation. Different layers of abstraction contribute differently in the overall system reliability; if this contribution can be assessed independently, the reliability of the system can be evaluated at the early stages of the design. We review the state-of-the-art in the area and discuss corresponding challenges .

Design for Embedded Reconfigurable Systems Using MORPHEUS Platform

This chapter is related to the paper “System Level Design for Embedded Reconfigurable Systems using MORPHEUS platform” (Brelet et al. (2010) System level design for embedded reconfigurable systems using MORPHEUS platform). It presents a novel approach for designing embedded reconfigurable systems. Reconfigurable systems bring a significant importance for their highly attractive mix of performance density, power efficiency and flexibility. In this chapter, we present a toolset that abstracts the heterogeneity and benefits of a dynamically reconfigurable heterogeneous platform called MORPHEUS (Voros et al. (2009) Dynamic system reconfiguration in heterogeneous platforms, the MORPHEUS approach. This platform consists of a System-on-Chip made of a regular system infrastructure hosting different kinds of heterogeneous reconfigurable engines accelerating some operations. Integrated mechanisms simplify the utilization of these reconfigurable accelerators at design time and minimize the time to fetch and reconfigure a function dynamically at run time. Implementing an application on the platform is made easier and faster by a comprehensive design environment. Industrial use cases from various application domains are also presented and used to evaluate the performance of the platform and assess the MORPHEUS concept.