HEATSMART: An interactive application aware thermal management framework for MPSoC embedded systems

Abstract

Multiprocessor System-on-Chip (MPSoC) is emerging as an integral component in embedded systems, such as mobile phones, PDAs, handheld medical devices, etc. Due to its immense processing power and incumbent hardware resources the users are able to execute multiple concurrent applications. The more applications the MPSoC executes the more heat it dissipates. Such eminent heat dissipation damages the device and induces faults, causing a shorter life span. Thus, thermal aware designs are of utmost important for durable and dependable embedded devices. The MPSoC could potentially control and manage the heat dissipation using techniques such as computation migration. However, this would be based on the operational behavior of the hardware, but not on the behavior of the applications mapped and executed on the hardware. We propose an interactive temperature management where the users are allowed to provide inputs to effectively manage the heat dissipation and at the same time are able to operate the applications according to their will. We propose and demonstrate a formal design methodology to assist the people involved during the design process.