A Time-Predictable DRAM Controller for Mixed Time-Criticality Systems
Hokeun Kim, Daniel Oh, Edward A. Lee

Citation
Hokeun Kim, Daniel Oh, Edward A. Lee. "A Time-Predictable DRAM Controller for Mixed Time-Criticality Systems". Talk or presentation, 13, February, 2014; Poster presented at the 2014 Berkeley EECS Annual Research Symposium.

Abstract
Mixed time-criticality systems, where tasks with different levels of timing constraints are running on the same hardware platform, introduce new challenges. To address those challenges, we propose a specialized DRAM memory controller that guarantees significantly lower worst-case latency and higher worst-case bandwidth for hard real-time tasks than traditional DRAM controllers while providing best effort performance for non hard real-time tasks. This is realized by bank-aware division of physical memory space of DRAM and prioritization of memory requests to reserved memory space. The proposed controller is evaluated by replaying memory traces obtained from executing benchmarks on RISC-V Rocket processor. A subset of RISC-V C benchmarks is selected with the size of their data sets increased, to assess DRAM performance under high memory contention. For even higher memory intensiveness and bandwidth measurements, two of the benchmarks are modified to include direct memory access (DMA) requests. Although still preliminary, the evaluation results show that up to 83.0% lower worst-case latency and 117% higher worst-case bandwidth for hard real-time tasks are achieved at cost of slightly higher average latency and lower average bandwidth for non-hard real-time tasks, compared to traditional DRAM scheduling policies.

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Citation formats  
  • HTML
    Hokeun Kim, Daniel Oh, Edward A. Lee. <a
    href="http://www.terraswarm.org/pubs/266.html"><i>A
    Time-Predictable DRAM Controller for Mixed Time-Criticality
    Systems</i></a>, Talk or presentation,  13,
    February, 2014; Poster presented at the <a
    href="http://www.terraswarm.org/conferences/14/bears/index.htm"
    >2014 Berkeley EECS Annual Research Symposium</a>.
  • Plain text
    Hokeun Kim, Daniel Oh, Edward A. Lee. "A
    Time-Predictable DRAM Controller for Mixed Time-Criticality
    Systems". Talk or presentation,  13, February, 2014;
    Poster presented at the <a
    href="http://www.terraswarm.org/conferences/14/bears/index.htm"
    >2014 Berkeley EECS Annual Research Symposium</a>.
  • BibTeX
    @presentation{KimOhLee14_TimePredictableDRAMControllerForMixedTimeCriticality,
        author = {Hokeun Kim and Daniel Oh and Edward A. Lee},
        title = {A Time-Predictable DRAM Controller for Mixed
                  Time-Criticality Systems},
        day = {13},
        month = {February},
        year = {2014},
        note = {Poster presented at the <a
                  href="http://www.terraswarm.org/conferences/14/bears/index.htm"
                  >2014 Berkeley EECS Annual Research Symposium</a>.},
        abstract = {Mixed time-criticality systems, where tasks with
                  different levels of timing constraints are running
                  on the same hardware platform, introduce new
                  challenges. To address those challenges, we
                  propose a specialized DRAM memory controller that
                  guarantees significantly lower worst-case latency
                  and higher worst-case bandwidth for hard real-time
                  tasks than traditional DRAM controllers while
                  providing best effort performance for non hard
                  real-time tasks. This is realized by bank-aware
                  division of physical memory space of DRAM and
                  prioritization of memory requests to reserved
                  memory space. The proposed controller is evaluated
                  by replaying memory traces obtained from executing
                  benchmarks on RISC-V Rocket processor. A subset of
                  RISC-V C benchmarks is selected with the size of
                  their data sets increased, to assess DRAM
                  performance under high memory contention. For even
                  higher memory intensiveness and bandwidth
                  measurements, two of the benchmarks are modified
                  to include direct memory access (DMA) requests.
                  Although still preliminary, the evaluation results
                  show that up to 83.0% lower worst-case latency and
                  117% higher worst-case bandwidth for hard
                  real-time tasks are achieved at cost of slightly
                  higher average latency and lower average bandwidth
                  for non-hard real-time tasks, compared to
                  traditional DRAM scheduling policies.},
        URL = {http://terraswarm.org/pubs/266.html}
    }
    

Posted by Hokeun Kim on 18 Feb 2014.
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