Virtual Platform-Based Design Space Exploration of Power-Efficient Distributed Embedded Applications
Abstract
Virtual Platform-Based Design Space Exploration of Power-Efficient Distributed Embedded Applications PARINAZ SAYYAH, Harman Becker Automotive Systems, Italy MIHAI T. LAZARESCU, Politecnico di Torino, Italy SARA BOCCHIO, STMicroelectronics, Italy EMAD EBEID, Aarhus University, Denmark GIANLUCA PALERMO, Politecnico di Milano, Italy DAVIDE QUAGLIA, University of Verona and EDALab s.r.l., Italy ALBERTO ROSTI, STMicroelectronics, Italy LUCIANO LAVAGNO, Politecnico di Torino, Italy Networked embedded systems are essential building blocks of a broad variety of distributed applications ranging from agriculture to industrial automation to healthcare and more. These often require specific energy optimizations to increase the battery lifetime or to operate using energy harvested from the environment. Since a dominant portion of power consumption is determined and managed by software, the software development process must have access to the sophisticated power management mechanisms provided by state-of-the-art hardware platforms to achieve the best tradeoff between system availability and reactivity. Furthermore, internode communications must be considered to properly assess the energy consumption. This article describes a design flow based on a SystemC virtual platform including both accurate power models of the hardware components and a fast abstract model of the wireless network. The platform allows both model-driven design of the application and the exploration of