1st Edition

Energy Efficient Hardware-Software Co-Synthesis Using Reconfigurable Hardware

By Jingzhao Ou, Viktor K. Prasanna Copyright 2010
    224 Pages 115 B/W Illustrations
    by Chapman & Hall

    224 Pages 115 B/W Illustrations
    by Chapman & Hall

    Rapid energy estimation for energy efficient applications using field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) remains a challenging research topic. Energy dissipation and efficiency have prevented the widespread use of FPGA devices in embedded systems, where energy efficiency is a key performance metric. Helping overcome these challenges, Energy Efficient Hardware-Software Co-Synthesis Using Reconfigurable Hardware offers solutions for the development of energy efficient applications using FPGAs.

    The book integrates various high-level abstractions for describing hardware and software platforms into a single, consistent application development framework, enabling users to construct, simulate, and debug systems. Based on these high-level concepts, it proposes an energy performance modeling technique to capture the energy dissipation behavior of both the reconfigurable hardware platform and the target applications running on it. The authors also present a dynamic programming-based algorithm to optimize the energy performance of an application running on a reconfigurable hardware platform. They then discuss an instruction-level energy estimation technique and a domain-specific modeling technique to provide rapid and fairly accurate energy estimation for hardware-software co-designs using reconfigurable hardware. The text concludes with example designs and illustrative examples that show how the proposed co-synthesis techniques lead to a significant amount of energy reduction.

    This book explores the advantages of using reconfigurable hardware for application development and looks ahead to future research directions in the field. It outlines the range of aspects and steps that lead to an energy efficient hardware-software application synthesis using FPGAs.

    Introduction

    Overview

    Challenges and Contributions

    Manuscript Organization

    Reconfigurable Hardware

    Reconfigurable System-on-Chips (RSoCs)

    Design Flows

    A High-Level Hardware-Software Application Development Framework

    Introduction

    Related Work

    Our Approach

    An Implementation Based on MATLAB/Simulink

    Illustrative Examples

    Summary

    Energy Performance Modeling and Energy Efficient Mapping for a Class of Applications

    Introduction

    Knobs for Energy Efficient Designs

    Related Work

    Performance Modeling of RSoC Architectures

    Problem Formulation

    Algorithm for Energy Minimization

    Illustrative Examples

    Summary

    High-Level Rapid Energy Estimation and Design Space Exploration

    Introduction

    Related Work

    Domain-Specific Modeling

    A Two-Step Rapid Energy Estimation Technique

    Energy Estimation for Customized Hardware Components

    Instruction-Level Energy Estimation for Software Programs

    Illustrative Examples

    Summary

    Hardware-Software Co-Design for Energy Efficient Implementations of Operating Systems

    Introduction

    Real-Time Operating Systems

    On-Chip Energy Management Mechanisms

    Related Work

    Our Approach

    An Implementation Based on MicroC/OS-II

    An Implementation Based on TinyOS

    Summary

    Concluding Remarks and Future Directions

    Concluding Remarks

    Future Work

    References

    Biography

    Jingzhao Ou works for the DSP Design Tools and Methodologies Group at Xilinx in San Jose, California.

    Viktor K. Prasanna is the Charles Lee Powell Chair in Engineering and professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Southern California.