Predictable Multicore System-on-Chips for Automotive Safety-critical Systems

适用于汽车安全关键系统的可预测多核片上系统

• 批准号: RGPIN-2022-03511
• 负责人: Patel, Hiren
• 金额: $ 3.35万
• 依托单位: University of Waterloo
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2022-01-01 至 2023-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=751639
• 关键词: Predictable; Multicore; System; Chips; Automotive

Automotive vehicles play a vital role in our lives. They provide one of the most common modes of transportation for millions of people. Today's automotive vehicles are a mix of mechanical and computing components where the computing components provide features such as advanced driver assistance systems and infotainment. Over the years, the number of computing components in a vehicle has grown and this trend is expected to continue accelerating with fully autonomous vehicles on the horizon. Safety in automotive vehicles is paramount because a failure in execution may result in significant injury or loss of lives. Thus, it is imperative that the application's execution is both functionally correct and guaranteed to be temporally within the bounds established by the application. For example, a delay in braking may have catastrophic consequences. This makes automotive vehicles an example of a safety-critical system. A central tenet in designing automotive vehicles is ensuring that they are certified. For example, ISO-26262 is a standard for automotive safety-critical systems (ASCSs). Certification includes processes that ensure the functionality is correct, and that the temporal behaviour of the application is within pre-determined deadlines. Providing assurances that an execution never exceeds a deadline is extremely challenging. This is because the underlying computing components lack timing predictability. That is, it is difficult to determine how long an application would take to execute in the worst case. This difficulty is attributed to the design of the computing components and their integration to form a system-on-chip (SoC). For example, current SoCs in ASCSs are complex with multiple cores, shared memories, and custom hardware. It is not surprising that they lack timing predictability. Nonetheless, such SoCs are highly coveted as they significantly reduce costs, improve performance, and are energy efficient. The overarching goal of my research program is to design predictable and high performance heterogeneous multicore SoCs for ASCSs. This proposal has five research objectives: (1) investigate predictable cache coherence mechanisms with practical memory hierarchies and scalable directory-based protocols; (2) design predictable and coherent data communication mechanisms across heterogeneous computing elements; (3) develop programming language extensions to annotate properties of data sharing useful for worst-case analyses; (4) develop predictable virtualization for ASCS; and, (5) implement a prototype. The results from this research will have long-lasting impact on both the Canadian economy and society. Industries of varying sizes will be able to evaluate the proposed techniques, and potentially adopt them into their products. The results may spawn innovative industries that, for example, may focus on providing customized solutions such as real-time operating systems specifically designed to support predictable multicore SoCs.

汽车在我们的生活中扮演着至关重要的角色。它们为数百万人提供了最常见的交通工具之一。今天的汽车是机械和计算组件的混合体，其中计算组件提供先进的驾驶员辅助系统和信息娱乐等功能。多年来，汽车中的计算组件数量一直在增长，随着全自动驾驶汽车的问世，这一趋势预计将继续加速。汽车的安全是最重要的，因为执行失败可能会导致重大伤害或生命损失。因此，必须保证应用程序的执行在功能上是正确的，并且在时间上保证在应用程序建立的范围内。例如，刹车的延迟可能会产生灾难性的后果。这使得汽车成为安全关键系统的一个例子。设计汽车的一个核心原则是确保它们获得认证。例如，ISO-26262是汽车安全关键系统(ASCSS)的标准。认证包括确保功能正确以及应用程序的临时行为在预定期限内的流程。要保证行刑不会超过最后期限，这一点极具挑战性。这是因为底层计算组件缺乏时间可预测性。也就是说，很难确定应用程序在最坏的情况下需要多长时间才能执行。这一困难归因于计算组件的设计及其集成以形成片上系统(SoC)。例如，当前ASCS中的SoC很复杂，具有多核、共享存储器和定制硬件。它们缺乏时间可预测性也就不足为奇了。尽管如此，这类SoC还是非常令人垂涎，因为它们显著降低了成本，提高了性能，并具有能效。我的研究计划的总体目标是为ASCSS设计可预测的、高性能的异质多核SoC。该方案有五个研究目标：(1)使用实用的存储层次和可扩展的基于目录的协议来研究可预测的高速缓存一致性机制；(2)设计跨异质计算单元的可预测和一致的数据通信机制；(3)开发编程语言扩展以注释数据共享的特性，以用于最坏情况的分析；(4)为ASC开发可预测的虚拟化；以及(5)实现一个原型。这项研究的结果将对加拿大经济和社会产生长期影响。不同规模的行业将能够评估拟议的技术，并有可能将其应用到他们的产品中。这一结果可能会催生创新行业，例如，可能专注于提供定制的解决方案，如专门为支持可预测的多核SoC而设计的实时操作系统。