A system-level approach to adaptivity and fault-tolerance in NoC-based MPSoCs: The MADNESS project

Modern embedded systems increasingly require adaptive run-time management of available resources. One method for supporting adaptivity is to implement run-time application mapping. The system may adapt the mapping of the applications in order to accommodate the current workload conditions, to balance the computing load for efficient resource utilization, to meet quality of service agreements, to avoid thermal hot-spots, and to reduce power consumption. As the possibility of experiencing run-time faults becomes increasingly relevant with deep-sub-micron technology nodes, in the scope of the MADNESS project, we focused particularly on the problem of graceful degradation by dynamic remapping in presence of run-time faults. In this paper, we summarize the major results achieved in the MADNESS project regarding the system adaptivity and fault-tolerant processing. We report the results of the integration between platform level and middleware level support for adaptivity and fault-tolerance. Two case studies demonstrate the survival ability of the system via a low-overhead process migration mechanism and by taking near optimal remapping decisions at run-time.