Heterogeneous multiprocessor synthesis under performance and reliability constraints

Utilizing a heterogeneous multiprocessor system has become a popular design paradigm to build an embedded system at a cheap cost. A reliability issue, which is vulnerability to single event upsets (SEUs), has not been taken into account in a conventional IC (integrated circuit) design flow, while chip area, performance, and power consumption have been done. This paper presents a system design paradigm in which a heterogeneous multiprocessor system is synthesized and its chip area is minimized under real-time and reliability constraints. First we define an SEU vulnerability factor for computer systems so that we evaluate reliability of a task over various processor configurations. Next we build a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model for minimizing chip area of a heterogeneous multiprocessor system under real-time and SEU vulnerability constraints. Finally, we show several experimental results on our synthesis approach. Experimental results show that our design paradigm has achieved automatic generation of cost-competitive and reliable heterogeneous multiprocessor systems.