Predictable and Runtime-Adaptable Network-On-Chip for Mixed-critical Real-time Systems (PDF)

Safety-critical and dependable embedded systems play an important role in our daily life. For example, modern vehicles integrate over 100 electronic
control units (ECUs). Due to the ever-increasing demand for high performance together with low energy consumption and size, multicore systems,as known from general-purpose computing, are adopted by the safety-critical embedded market. The integration of multiple cores in a chip to a multiprocessor system on chip (MPSoC)offers the possibility to consolidate multiple
functions or ECUs, which previously had been distributed and isolated by external buses. This consolidation of functions with different overall importance leads to mixed-criticality multicore systems [28]. In this context,a critical function is essential for the safety of the system. Therefore, this
function is developed with high diligence and so the behaviour (e.g. timing)is well specified and tested. For non-critical functions the confidence in the
characteristics is lower, e.g., the possibility that the function deviates from the specification is higher. Additionally, non-critical functions might be user
provided and the risk of malicious functions trying to endanger system safety,e.g., through denial-of-service attacks, increases.Figure 1.1 presents an example for typical features in a modern car. These
include classical applications, such as engine control or entertainment functions,but also new complex functions for highly automated and autonomous
driving, which all have different requirements. To provide all these features,a system must offer high performance and parallel processing.