Design and comparative evaluation of GPGPU- and FPGA-based MPSoC ECU architectures for secure, dependable, and real-time automotive CPS

Abstract

In this paper, we propose and implement two electronic control unit (ECU) architectures for real-time automotive cyber-physical systems that incorporate security and dependability primitives with low resources and energy overhead. These ECUs architectures follow the multiprocessor system-on-chip (MPSoC) design paradigm wherein the ECUs have multiple heterogeneous processing engines with specific functionalities. The first architecture, GED, leverages an ARM-based application processor and a GPGPU-based co-processor. The second architecture, RED, integrates an ARM based application processor with a FPGA-based co-processor. We quantify and compare temporal performance, energy, and error resilience of our proposed architectures for a steer-by-wire case study over CAN, CAN FD, and FlexRay in-vehicle networks. Hardware implementation results reveal that RED and GED can attain a speedup of 31.7× and 1.8×, respectively, while consuming 1.75× and 2× less energy, respectively, than contemporary ECU architectures.