Task mapping and flow priority assignment of real-time industrial applications for network-on-chip based design

Abstract

Network-on-chip (NoC) is a paradigm shift for communication between cores in multi-processor systems. It has emerged as a solution for addressing the limitations of bus-based communication in multi-processor system design. The use of MPSoC (Multi-Processor System on Chip) based design of real-time safety-critical embedded systems (such as, Avionics, Automotive etc.) is really a challenge because of the requirement of time predictability and reliability of highest degree. Task mapping and flow priority assignment are two crucial steps for real-time NoC design. Most of the earlier work on priority assignment for on-chip communications are either based on exhaustive search or are heuristic in nature.In this paper, a search based explorative solution to the priority assignment problem has been proposed with a Genetic Algorithm (GA) based formulation that uses experimentally determined heuristics to converge faster with a better solution. Unlike other works in the area, proposed work considers the task execution time while assigning flow priorities. The paper proposes a combined priority assignment and task mapping solution. The approach has been validated with two real-time industrial applications - one from automotive domain, while the other one is from avionics.