Contention & Energy-Aware Real-Time Task Mapping on NoC Based Heterogeneous MPSoCs

Abstract

Network-on-Chip (NoC)-based multiprocessor system-on-chips (MPSoCs) are becoming the de-facto computing platform for computationally intensive real-time applications in the embedded systems due to their high performance, exceptional quality-of-service (QoS) and energy efficiency over superscalar uniprocessor architectures. Energy saving is important in the embedded system because it reduces the operating cost while prolongs lifetime and improves the reliability of the system. In this paper, contention-aware energy efficient static mapping using NoC-based heterogeneous MPSoC for real-time tasks with an individual deadline and precedence constraints is investigated. Unlike other schemes task ordering, mapping, and voltage assignment are performed in an integrated manner to minimize the processing energy while explicitly reduce contention between the communications and communication energy. Furthermore, both dynamic voltage and frequency scaling and dynamic power management are used for energy consumption optimization. The developed contention-aware integrated task mapping and voltage assignment (CITM-VA) static energy management scheme performs tasks ordering using earliest latest finish time first (ELFTF) strategy that assigns priorities to the tasks having shorter latest finish time (LFT) over the tasks with longer LFT. It remaps every task to a processor and/or discrete voltage level that reduces processing energy consumption. Similarly, the communication energy is minimized by assigning discrete voltage levels to the NoC links. Further, total energy efficiency is achieved by putting the processor into a low-power state when feasible. Moreover, this approach resolves the contention between communications that traverse the same link by allocating links to communications with higher priority. The results obtained through extensive simulations of real-world benchmarks demonstrate that CITM-VA approach outperforms state-of-the-art technique and achieves an average ~30% total energy improvement. Additionally, it maintains high QoS and robustness for real-time applications.