Real-time execution monitoring on multi-processor system-on-chip

In system-level design, design space exploration (DSE) produces large amounts of data when exploring myriad of alternatives for application mapping and the underlying platform. Visualization of the essential execution data makes the right design decisions essentially easier. This paper presents execution monitor, a versatile monitoring tool implemented in Java, for multi-processor systems-on-chip (MPSoCs). It allows monitoring both the application and the underlying platform in real-time, and also viewing the previously recorded execution trace. Execution monitor can be used both during the simulation and prototyping. Moreover, the designer can rapidly evaluate in run-time the performance of multiple application mappings via intuitive drag-and-drop mechanism. The case study shows that the visualization of the monitored execution data significantly eases optimizing the performance of the video codec after addition of new application functionality.