• Journal of Computing Science and Engineering
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.51-72
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• 2015

Time predictability is crucial in hard real-time and safety-critical systems. Cache memories, while useful for improving the average-case memory performance, are not time predictable, especially when they are shared in multicore processors. To achieve time predictability while minimizing the impact on performance, this paper explores several time-predictable scratch-pad memory (SPM) based architectures for multicore processors. To support these architectures, we propose the dynamic memory objects allocation based partition, the static allocation based partition, and the static allocation based priority L2 SPM strategy to retain the characteristic of time predictability while attempting to maximize the performance and energy efficiency. The SPM based multicore architectural design and the related allocation methods thus form a comprehensive solution to hard real-time multicore based computing. Our experimental results indicate the strengths and weaknesses of each proposed architecture and the allocation method, which offers interesting on-chip memory design options to enable multicore platforms for hard real-time systems.

• Journal of Computing Science and Engineering
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.177-189
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• 2015

High-performance processors using Non-Uniform Cache Architecture (NUCA) are increasingly used to deal with the growing wire delays in multicore/manycore processors. Due to the convergence of high-performance computing with embedded computing, NUCA caches are expected to benefit high-end embedded systems as well. However, for real-time systems that use multicore processors with NUCA caches, it is crucial to bound worst-case execution time (WCET) accurately and safely. In this paper, we developed a WCET analysis approach by considering the effect of static NUCA caches on WCET. We compared the WCET in real-time applications with different topologies of static NUCA caches. Our experimental results demonstrated that the static NUCA cache could improve the worst-case performance of realtime applications using multicore processor compared to the cache with uniform access time.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.10 no.7
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• pp.3231-3244
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• 2016

As processor design has been transiting from homogeneous multicore processor to heterogeneous multicore processor, traditional Amdahl's law cannot meet the new challenges for asymmetric multicore system. In order to further investigate the impact factors related to the Overhead of Data Preparation (ODP) for Asymmetric multicore systems, we evaluate an asymmetric multicore system built with CPU-GPU by measuring the overheads of memory transfer, computing kernel, cache missing and synchronization. This paper demonstrates that decreasing the overhead of data preparation is a promising approach to improve the whole performance of heterogeneous system.

• International Journal of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.1-7
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• 2019

Previously, parallel computing was mainly used in areas requiring high computing performance, but nowadays, multicore CPUs and GPUs have become widespread, and parallel programming advantages can be obtained even in a PC environment. Various parallel programming frameworks using multicore CPUs such as OpenMP and PPL have been announced. Nvidia and AMD have developed parallel programming platforms and APIs for program developers to take advantage of multicore GPUs on their graphics cards. In this paper, we develop digital image transformation programs that runs on each of the major parallel programming frameworks, and measure the execution time. We analyze the characteristics of each framework through the execution time comparison. Also a constant K indicating the ratio of program execution time between different parallel computing environments is presented. Using this, it is possible to predict rough execution time without implementing a parallel program.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.10 no.11
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• pp.5419-5436
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• 2016

Enhancing the performance of computing systems has been an important topic since the invention of computers. The leading-edge technologies of multicore and virtualization dramatically influence the development of current IT systems. We study performance attributes of response time (RT), throughput, efficiency, and scalability of a virtualized Web system running on a multicore server. We build virtual machines (VMs) for a Web application, and use distributed stress tests to measure RTs and throughputs under varied combinations of virtual cores (VCs) and VM instances. Their gains, efficiencies and scalabilities are also computed and compared. Our experimental and analytic results indicate: 1) A system can perform and scale much better by adopting multiple single-VC VMs than by single multiple-VC VM. 2) The system capacity gain is proportional to the number of VM instances run, but not proportional to the number of VCs allocated in a VM. 3) A system with more VMs or VCs has higher physical CPU utilization, but lower vCPU utilization. 4) The maximum throughput gain is less than VM or VC gain. 5) Per-core computing efficiency does not correlate to the quality of VCs or VMs employed. The outcomes can provide valuable guidelines for selecting instance types provided by public Cloud providers and load balancing planning for Web systems.

• Journal of Internet Computing and Services
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• v.18 no.6
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• pp.47-53
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• 2017

Recently, huge datasets have been generating rapidly in a variety of fields. Then, there is an urgent need for technologies that will allow efficient and effective processing of huge datasets. Therefore the problems of partitioning a huge dataset effectively and alleviating the processing overhead of the partitioned data efficiently have been a critical factor for scalability and performance in distributed database system. In our work we utilized multicore servers to provide scalable service to our distributed system. The partitioning of database over multicore servers have emerged from a need for new architectural design of distributed database system from scalability and performance concerns in today's data deluge. The system allows uniform access through a web service interface to concurrently distributed databases over multicore servers, using SQMD (Single Query Multiple Database) mechanism based on publish/subscribe paradigm. We will present performance results with the distributed database system built on multicore server, which is time intensive with traditional architectures. We will also discuss future works.

• Journal of Computing Science and Engineering
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.25-33
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• 2014

In this paper, we quantitatively compare two different time-predictable multicore cache architectures, separate and statically-partitioned caches, through extensive simulation. Current research trends primarily focus on partitioned-cache architectures in order to achieve time predictability for hard real-time multicore based systems, and our experiments reveal that separate caches actually lead to much better performance and energy efficiency when compared to statically-partitioned caches, and both of them are adequate for timing analysis for real-time multicore applications.

• Journal of Computing Science and Engineering
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.26-38
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• 2012

Java has been increasingly used in programming for real-time systems. However, some of Java's features such as automatic memory management and dynamic compilation are harmful to time predictability. If these problems are not solved properly then it can fundamentally limit the usage of Java for real-time systems, especially for hard real-time systems that require very high time predictability. In this paper, we propose to exploit multicore computing in order to reduce the timing unpredictability that is caused by dynamic compilation and adaptive optimization. Our goal is to retain high performance comparable to that of traditional dynamic compilation, while at the same time, obtain better time predictability for Java virtual machine (JVM). We have studied pre-compilation techniques to utilize another core more efficiently, preoptimization on another core (PoAC) scheme to replace the adaptive optimization system (AOS) in Jikes JVM and the counter based optimization (CBO). Our evaluation reveals that the proposed approaches are able to attain high performance while greatly reducing the variation of the execution time for Java applications.

• Journal of Computing Science and Engineering
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.67-80
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• 2013

The worst-case execution time (WCET) of each real-time task in multicore processors with shared caches can be significantly affected by inter-thread cache interferences. The worst-case inter-thread cache interferences are dependent on how tasks are scheduled to run on different cores. Therefore, there is a circular dependence between real-time task scheduling, the worst-case inter-thread cache interferences, and WCET in multicore processors, which is not the case for single-core processors. To address this challenging problem, we present an offline real-time scheduling approach for multicore processors by considering the worst-case inter-thread interferences on shared L2 caches. Our scheduling approach uses a greedy heuristic to generate safe schedules while minimizing the worst-case inter-thread shared L2 cache interferences and WCET. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed approach can reduce the utilization of the resulting schedule by about 12% on average compared to the cyclic multicore scheduling approaches in our theoretical model. Our evaluation indicates that the enhanced scheduling approach is more likely to generate feasible and safe schedules with stricter timing constraints in multicore real-time systems.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Next Generation Computing
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.39-49
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• 2019

Recently, CPU-GPU integrated heterogeneous multicore processors have been widely used for improving the performance of computing systems. Heterogeneous multicore processors integrate CPUs and GPUs on a single chip where CPUs and GPUs share the LLC(Last Level Cache). This causes a serious cache contention problem inside the processor, resulting in significant performance degradation. In this paper, we propose the partitioned LLC architecture to solve the cache contention problem in heterogeneous multicore processors. We analyze the performance impact varying the LLC size of CPUs and GPUs, respectively. According to our simulation results, the bigger the LLC size of the CPU, the CPU performance improves by up to 21%. However, the GPU shows negligible performance difference when the assigned LLC size increases. In other words, the GPU is less likely to lose the performance when the LLC size decreases. Because the performance degradation due to the LLC size reduction in GPU is much smaller than the performance improvement due to the increase of the LLC size of the CPU, the overall performance of heterogeneous multicore processors is expected to be improved by applying partitioned LLC to CPUs and GPUs. In addition, if we develop a memory management technique that can maximize the performance of each core in the future, we can greatly improve the performance of heterogeneous multicore processors.