GRASP with ejection chains for the dynamic memory allocation in embedded systems

Abstract

In the design of electronic embedded systems, the allocation of data structures to memory banks is a main challenge faced by designers. Indeed, if this optimization problem is solved correctly, a great improvement in terms of efficiency can be obtained. In this paper, we consider the dynamic memory allocation problem, where data structures have to be assigned to memory banks in different time periods during the execution of the application. We propose a GRASP to obtain high quality solutions in short computational time, as required in this type of problem. Moreover, we also explore the adaptation of the ejection chain methodology, originally proposed in the context of tabu search, for improved outcomes. Our experiments with real and randomly generated instances show the superiority of the proposed methods compared to the state-of-the-art method.