Tutorial on Predictable and Composable Systems

Novel embedded systems, such as smart phones, have to execute multiple streaming applications concurrently. A user may, for example, use a mobile phone to watch a video that is being decoded using an MPEG-4 decoder while an MP3 decoder is used to decode the accompanying audio. The applications may use an Internet connection that requires a software-defined radio protocol to download the required bit streams. The user expects that these applications have a robust behavior and that their performance is guaranteed. At the same time, the resource usage of these applications should be kept as small as possible in order to reduce cost both in terms of area and energy.

In the architecture domain there is a clear trend to use heterogeneous multi-processor systems-on-chip (MPSoCs) to meet the requirements of next-generation real-time streaming systems at an affordable area and energy cost. Designing these systems is a very challenging task, especially since the interactions between all hardware and software components need to be considered to provide timing guarantees. Predictable MPSoC platforms in combination with a model-based design approach based on the dataflow model-of-computation have emerged as a promising solution to address this design challenge. This tutorial presents a complete overview of the dataflow model-of-computation, a predictable MPSoC platform, and the model-based design approaches needed to design next-generation embedded systems for real-time streaming applications. The tutorial includes a hands-on session in which the participants apply this theory to a practical example.