Chronos-v: a many-core high-level model with support for management techniques

Abstract

This work presents Chronos-V, a Many-Core System-on-Chip (MCSoC) that adopts abstract hardware modeling, executing the FreeRTOS Operating System (OS) at each processing element (PE). Chronos-V is a heterogeneous architecture with two regions: (i) General Purpose Processing Elements (GPPE), responsible for executing user applications; (ii) peripherals that provide IO capabilities or hardware acceleration to the system. Besides the standard goal of high-level models, design space exploration at early design stages with reduced simulation time, our goal is to advance the state-of-the-art in the MCSoC research field by proposing an architecture with hardware and software support for management techniques. As a case study, we present an ODA (Observe-Decide-Actuate) loop for thermal management, comparing it to a dark silicon patterning mapping in a platform with 196 PEs. Thermal maps show the benefits of using dynamic thermal management regarding hotspot avoidance and temperature reduction.