Fast worst-case peak temperature evaluation for real-time applications on multi-core systems

Abstract

The reliability of multi-core systems is nowadays threatened by high chip temperatures leading to long-term reliability concerns and short-term functional errors. In real-time systems, high chip temperatures are even adherent to potential deadline violations. Therefore, correct functionality can only be guaranteed if the worst-case peak temperature is incorporated in real-time analysis. However, calculating the peak temperature of hundreds of design alternatives during design space exploration is time-consuming. In this paper, we address this challenge and present a fast analytic method to calculate a non-trivial upper bound on the maximum temperature of a multi-core real-time system with non-deterministic workload. The considered thermal model is able to address various thermal effects like heat exchange between neighboring cores and temperature-dependent leakage power. Finally, the proposed method is applied to a multi-core ARM platform to validate its efficiency and accuracy.