PERFORMANCE PREDICTION AND VERIFICATION ENVIRONMENT FOR SUPER-INTEGRATED DATA-DRIVEN PROCESSORS; RESCUE

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Wabiko, Yasuhiro | Nishikawa, Hiroaki

Affiliations: Institute of Information Sciences and Electronics, University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba Science City, Japan

Abstract: In order for multi-media networking environment to meet future infrastructure needs, it must satisfy not only functional specification but also performance specification such as turnaround time, data flow rate and so on. The authors have focused on the fact that data-driven schema (DDS), a natural notation for describing parallel processing, has been broadly utilized as specification tool which also is a representation of executable program on data-driven processors. An integrated development environment that supports description of both functional and performance specifications, as well as providing executable programs which take into account engineering constraints can be realized by adopting DDS. This is possible because DDS can represent engineering constraints such as pipeline configuration. Furthermore, turnaround time of a data-driven program can be directly and explicitly shown onto the DDS representing the program. Since verification on performance specitication is on the premise that functional specification has already been verified, the authors first studied a reuse-oriented specification environment to support side-effect detection for programs generated from functional specification described in DDS. Based on this environment, the authors are currently developing a performance prediction and verification environment named Realtime Execution System for CUE (Coordinating Users' requirements and Engineering constraints)-series data-driven processors: RESCUE. This paper first describes DDS-based specification for both user's requirements and engineering constraints. Some examples of the user's requirements include algorithm, data-structure, turnaround time, and data flow rate. Engineering constraints include pipeline configuration, instruction set supported by the processor, etc. Implementations for performance prediction and verification follow. The paper goes on to show an interactive optimization scheme for program allocation to multi-processors as a tuning method when the user's requirement for turnaround time is not met. Incorporation of audio media into future user/system interface for RESCUE is also discussed, since visual description and display of schemas are not sufficient and also because audio media is essential to realize a truly interactive environment.

Journal: Journal of Integrated Design & Process Science, vol. 5, no. 4, pp. 55-76, 2001