Dynamic power management for UML modeled applications on multiprocessor SoC

The paper presents a novel scheme of dynamic power management for UML modeled applications that are executed on a multiprocessor System-on-Chip (SoC) in a distributed manner. The UML models for both application and architecture are designed according to a well-defined UML profile for embedded system design, called TUT-Profile. Application processes are considered as elementary units of distributed execution, and their mapping on a multiprocessor SoC can be dynamically changed at run-time. Our approach on the dynamic power management balances utilized processor resources against current workload at runtime by (1) observing the processor and workload statistics, (2) re-evaluating the amount of required resources (i.e. the number of active processors), and (3) re-mapping the application processes to the minimum set of active processors. The inactive processors are set to a power-save state by using clock-gating. The approach integrates the well-known power management techniques tightly with the UML based design of embedded systems in a novel way. We evaluated the dynamic power management with a WLAN terminal implemented on a multiprocessor SoC on Altera Stratix II FPGA containing up to five Nios II processors and dedicated hardware accelerators. Measurements proved up to 21% savings in the power consumption of the whole FPGA board.