Code Generation For Embedded Processors

Modern electronics is driven by the explosive growth of digital communications and multi-media technology. A basic challenge is to design first-time-right complex digital systems, that meet stringent constraints on performance and power dissipation. In order to combine this growing system complexity with an increasingly short time-to-market, new system design technologies are emerging based on the paradigm of embedded programmable processors. This concept introduces modularity, flexibility and re-use in the electronic system design process. However, its success will critically depend on the availability of efficient and reliable CAD tools to design, programme and verify the functionality of embedded processors. Recently, new research efforts emerged on the edge between software compilation and hardware synthesis, to develop high-quality code generation tools for embedded processors. Code Generation for Embedded Systems provides a survey of these new developments. Although not limited to these targets, the main emphasis is on code generation for modern DSP processors. Important themes covered by the book include: the scope of general purpose versus application-specific processors, machine code quality for embedded applications, retargetability of the code generation process, machine description formalisms, and code generation methodologies. Code Generation for Embedded Systems is the essential introduction to this fast developing field of research for students, researchers, and practitioners alike.

According to market analysts, the market for consumer electronics will con tinue to grow at a rate higher than that of electronic systems in general. The consumer market can be characterized by rapidly growing complexities of appli cations and a rather short market window. As a result, more and more complex designs have to be completed in shrinking time frames. A key concept for coping with such stringent requirements is re-use. Since the re-use of completely fixed large hardware blocks is limited to subproblems of system-level applications (for example MPEG-2), flexible, programmable pro cessors are being used as building blocks for more and more designs. Processors provide a unique combination offeatures: they provide flexibility and re-use. The processors used in consumer electronics are, however, in many cases dif ferent from those that are used for screen and keyboard-based equipment, such as PCs. For the consumer market in particular, efficiency of the product plays a dominating role. Hence, processor architectures for these applications are usually highly-optimized and tailored towards a certain application domain.

This book focuses on source-to-source code transformations that remove addressing-related overhead present in most multimedia or signal processing application programs. This approach is complementary to existing compiler technology. What is particularly attractive about the transformation flow pre sented here is that its behavior is nearly independent of the target processor platform and the underlying compiler. Hence, the different source code trans formations developed here lead to impressive performance improvements on most existing processor architecture styles, ranging from RISCs like ARM7 or MIPS over Superscalars like Intel-Pentium, PowerPC, DEC-Alpha, Sun and HP, to VLIW DSPs like TI C6x and Philips TriMedia. The source code did not have to be modified between processors to obtain these results. Apart from the performance improvements, the estimated energy is also significantly reduced for a given application run. These results were not obtained for academic codes but for realistic and rep resentative applications, all selected from the multimedia domain. That shows the industrial relevance and importance of this research. At the same time, the scientific novelty and quality of the contributions have lead to several excellent papers that have been published in internationally renowned conferences like e. g. DATE. This book is hence of interest for academic researchers, both because of the overall description of the methodology and related work context and for the detailed descriptions of the compilation techniques and algorithms.

Embedded core processors are becoming a vital part of today's system-on-a-chip in the growing areas of telecommunications, multimedia and consumer electronics. This is mainly in response to a need to track evolving standards with the flexibility of embedded software. Consequently, maintaining the high product performance and low product cost requires a careful design of the processor tuned to the application domain. With the increased presence of instruction-set processors, retargetable software compilation techniques are critical, not only for improving engineering productivity, but to allow designers to explore the architectural possibilities for the application domain. Retargetable Compilers for Embedded Core Processors, with a Foreword written by Ahmed Jerraya and Pierre Paulin, overviews the techniques of modern retargetable compilers and shows the application of practical techniques to embedded instruction-set processors. The methods are highlighted with examples from industry processors used in products for multimedia, telecommunications, and consumer electronics. An emphasis is given to the methodology and experience gained in applying two different retargetable compiler approaches in industrial settings. The book also discusses many pragmatic areas such as language support, source code abstraction levels, validation strategies, and source-level debugging. In addition, new compiler techniques are described which support address generation for DSP architecture trends. The contribution is an address calculation transformation based on an architectural model. Retargetable Compilers for Embedded Core Processors will be of interest to embedded system designers and programmers, the developers of electronic design automation (EDA) tools for embedded systems, and researchers in hardware/software co-design.

Transactions on HiPEAC aims at the timely dissemination of research contributions in computer architecture and compilation methods for high-performance embedded computer systems. Recognizing the convergence of embedded and general-purpose computer systems, this journal publishes original research on systems targeted at specific computing tasks as well as systems with broad application bases. The scope of the journal therefore covers all aspects of computer architecture, code generation and compiler optimization methods of interest to researchers and practitioners designing future embedded systems. This second issue contains 15 papers carefully reviewed and selected out of 31 submissions and is divided into two sections. The first section contains extended versions of the top five papers from the 2nd International Conference on High-Performance Embedded Architectures and Compilers (HiPEAC 2007) held in Ghent, Belgium, in January 2007. The second section consists of ten papers covering topics such as microarchitecture, memory systems, code generation, and performance modeling.

It was our great pleasure to hold the 2nd International Symposium onAutomated Te- nology on Veri?cation and Analysis (ATVA) in Taipei, Taiwan, ROC, October 31- November3,2004. TheseriesofATVAmeetingsisintendedforthepromotionofrelated research in eastern Asia. In the last decade, automated technology on veri?cation has become the new strength in industry and brought forward various hot research activities in both Europe and USA. In comparison, easternAsia has been quiet in the forum. With more and more IC design houses moving from SiliconValley to easternAsia, we believe this is a good time to start cultivating related research activities in the region. TheemphasisoftheATVAworkshopseriesisonvariousmechanicalandinformative techniques, which can give engineers valuable feedback to fast converge their designs according to the speci?cations. The scope of interest contains the following research - eas: model-checking theory, theorem-proving theory, state-space reduction techniques, languages in automated veri?cation, parametric analysis, optimization, formal perf- mance analysis, real-time systems, embedded systems, in?nite-state systems, Petri nets, UML, synthesis, tools, and practice in industry.

Today’s embedded devices and sensor networks are becoming more and more sophisticated, requiring more efficient and highly flexible compilers. Engineers are discovering that many of the compilers in use today are ill-suited to meet the demands of more advanced computer architectures. Updated to include the latest techniques, The Compiler Design Handbook, Second Edition offers a unique opportunity for designers and researchers to update their knowledge, refine their skills, and prepare for emerging innovations. The completely revised handbook includes 14 new chapters addressing topics such as worst case execution time estimation, garbage collection, and energy aware compilation. The editors take special care to consider the growing proliferation of embedded devices, as well as the need for efficient techniques to debug faulty code. New contributors provide additional insight to chapters on register allocation, software pipelining, instruction scheduling, and type systems. Written by top researchers and designers from around the world, The Compiler Design Handbook, Second Edition gives designers the opportunity to incorporate and develop innovative techniques for optimization and code generation.