Model-Based Representation of Schedules for Dataflow Graphs.
Christian Zebelein, Christian D. Haubelt, Joachim Falk, Jürgen Teich · 2013
Dataflow models of computation are often used in model-based MPSoC design flows, as they naturally expose the parallelism contained in an application. In a dataflow model, concurrent processes (actors) communicate via packets transmitted over channels. During system design, actors mapped to the same processing element must be scheduled. While model-based schedule representations are desirable, existing approaches are either restricted to static dataflow models for which static schedules can be determined, or they introduce special scheduling actors with different semantics compared to actors of the underlying dataflow model, thereby hampering hierarchical composition. In this paper, we propose a modeling approach which unifies the representation of application and scheduling actors, while at the same time retaining the same welldefined dataflow semantics for both actor types. Furthermore, being based on guarded actions, the proposed approach also provides for both, dynamic dataflow actors and dynamic scheduling. Additionally, we show how (quasi-)static schedules can be represented by the proposed modeling approach and how the reduced scheduling overhead is reflected by the schedule representation. 1.