Processing element allocation and dynamic scheduling codesign for multi-function SoCs

This work is motivated by the rapid increase in design complexity of many multi-function System on Chips. It proposes solutions to both resolve the hardware contention issues of non-preemptive processing elements shared among tasks, and to optimize cost. A software solution based on start time management is proposed to interleave task execution on processing elements. Algorithms are proposed to determine the required processing elements of selected types, when there is no knowledge on the release time of any task. For tasks whose release orders are known a priori, an optimal algorithm is presented if processing elements have the same cost, otherwise, if processing elements do not have the same cost, a pseudo polynomial-time algorithm based on dynamic programming is presented. The performance of the algorithms is also evaluated for general cases.