Current Issue : January - March Volume : 2012 Issue Number : 1 Articles : 5 Articles
Tuning cache hierarchies in platforms for embedded systems can significantly reduce energy consumption. In this paper we combined two optimization methods for tuning both instruction and data cache configurations in a two-level memory hierarchy, where both levels have separate instruction and data caches. This kind of hierarchy allows us to evaluate instruction and data caches branches separately, although previous approaches have applied the same method for both branches of the hierarchy. This work evaluates several methods intended for two-level hierarchies, and the results showed that when we combine different methods for each branch of the hierarchy, results can be improved. Experiments based on simulations were performed for 12 applications from the Mibench suite benchmark and the combined method achieved better efficiency in 60% of the evaluated cases compared with existing heuristics. The proposed solution is only 11% less economic in terms of energy consumption than optimal values and required, on average, 42 simulations to conclude optimization mechanism, representing only 9% of the design space....
As technology scales for increased circuit density and performance, the management of power consumption in system-on-chip (SoC) is becoming critical. Today, having the appropriate electronic system level (ESL) tools for power estimation in the design flow is mandatory. The main challenge for the design of such dedicated tools is to achieve a better tradeoff between accuracy and speed. This paper presents a consumption estimation approach allowing taking the consumption criterion into account early in the design flow during the system cosimulation. The originality of this approach is that it allows the power estimation for both white-box intellectual properties (IPs) using annotated power models and black-box IPs using standalone power estimators. In order to obtain accurate power estimates, our simulations were performed at the cycle-accurate bit-accurate (CABA) level, using SystemC. To make our approach fast and not tedious for users, the simulated architectures, including standalone power estimators, were generated automatically using a model driven engineering (MDE) approach. Both annotated power models and standalone power estimators can be used together to estimate the consumption of the same architecture, which makes them complementary. The simulation results showed that the power estimates given by both estimation techniques for a hardware component are very close, with a difference that does not exceed 0.3%. This proves that, even when the IP code is not accessible or not modifiable, our approach allows obtaining quite accurate power estimates that early in the design flow thanks to the automation offered by the MDE approach....
The increasing demand for portable computing has elevated power consumption to be one of the most critical embedded systems design parameters. In this paper, we present a precise high-level power estimation methodology for the software loaded on a VLIW processor that is based on a functional level power model. The targeted processor of our approach is the TMS320C6416T DSP from Texas Instrument. We consider several important issues in our model such as the pipeline stall, inter-instructions effect and cache misses. The contributions are the following. First, a precise model to estimate the power consumption of the targeted DSP, while running a software algorithm is proposed. Second, we prove the validation and precision of our model on many typical algorithms applied in signal and image processing. Third, we further validate the precision of our model on a real application applied in the video processing field. The power consumption estimated by our model is compared to the physically measured power consumption, achieving a very low average absolute estimation error of 1.65% and a maximum absolute estimation error of only 3.3%....
The wide utilisation of information and communication technologies is hoped to enable a more efficient and sustainable operation of electric power grids. This paper analyses the benefits of smart power grids for the integration of renewable energy resources into the existing grid infrastructure. Therefore, the concept of a smart power grid is analysed, and it is shown that it covers more than for example, time-of-use energy tariffs. Further, the communication technologies used for smart grids are discussed, and the challenge of interoperability between the smart grid itself and its active contributors such as functional buildings is shown. A significant share of electrical energy demand is and will be constituted by large functional buildings that are mostly equipped with automation systems and therefore enable a relatively simple IT integration into smart grids. This large potential of thermal storages and flexible consumption processes might be a future key to match demand and supply under the presence of a high share of fluctuating generation from renewables....
Software and embedded system companies today encounter problems related to requirements management tool integration, incorrect tool usage, and lack of traceability. This is due to utilized tools with no clear meta-model and semantics to communicate requirements between different stakeholders. This paper presents a comprehensive meta-model for requirements management. The focus is on software and embedded system domains. The goal is to define generic requirements management domain concepts and abstract interfaces between requirements management and system development. This leads to a portable requirements management meta-model which can be adapted with various system modeling languages. The created meta-model is prototyped by translating it into a UML profile. The profile is imported into a UML tool which is used for rapid evaluation of meta-model concepts in practice. The developed profile is associated with a proof of concept report generator tool that automatically produces up-to-date documentation from the models in form of web pages. The profile is adopted to create an example model of embedded system requirement specification which is built with the profile....
Loading....