FRED Analyzer

FRED-analyzer is a tool to analyze the timing properties of applications running upon the FRED framework.

The tool offers the following features:

  • it provides analytical bounds on the maximum delay that can be experienced by a SW-task when requesting the execution of a hardware accelerator;

  • it allows computing an upper-bound on the worst-case response time of a SW-task that requests the execution of hardware accelerators, and runs together with other SW-tasks under preemptive fixed-priority scheduling; and

  • it allows bounding the worst-case delay experienced by hardware accelerators when accessing a shared memory through a series of hierarhically-connected bus interconnects (required to bound their worst-case execution times). The analysis can also take into account the presence of the predictable bus manager.

The tool is capable of testing different configurations of the system to perform a design space exploration. Specifically, it allows controlling:

  • the partitioning of the FPGA fabric and the affinities of the hardware accelerators;

  • the priorities and the deadlines of SW-tasks;

  • the structure of the bus hierarchy and its connections to hardware accelerators; and

  • the configuration of the predictable bus manager (transaction budget, nominal burst size, and maximum number of outstanding transactions).

Reference