A WCET-aware parallel programming model for predictability enhanced multi-core architectures

Increasing performance requirements for cyber-physical systems in real-time applications raise the necessity to migrate to multi-core processor systems. However, commercial of the shelf multi-core systems are often inappropriate for the real-time domain and real-time capable multi-core programming models are rare. In this paper, we present a solution developed within the EU research project ARGO. By means of a predictability-enhanced NoC-based multi-/many-core architecture, we investigate hardware properties that can help to improve the predictability of the platform and the programming model. Both platform and programming model are complemented by a WCET-aware Architecture Description Language (ADL). This enables a certain degree of hardware abstraction while preserving the relevant details for accurate multi-core WCET analysis algorithms. Target platform and programming model are designed to be statically analyzable by multi-core WCET computation tools, that are part of the automated WCET-aware software parallelization tool flow developed in the ARGO project.