Facilitating Component Reusability in Embedded Systems with GPUs

One way to fulfill the increased requirements (e.g., performance) of modern embedded systems is through the usage of GPUs. The existing embedded platforms that contain GPUs bring several challenges when developing applications using the component-based development methodology. With no specific GPU support, the component developer needs to encapsulate inside the component, all the information related to the GPU, including the settings regarding the GPU resources (e.g., number of used GPU threads). This way of developing components with GPU capability makes them specific to particular contexts, which negatively impacts the reusability aspect. For example, a component that is constructed to filter 640\(\,\times \,\)480 pixel frames may produce erroneous results when reused in a context that deals with higher resolution frames. We propose a solution that facilitates the reusability of components with GPU capabilities. The solution automatically constructs several (functional-) equivalent component instances that are all-together used to process the same data. The solution is implemented as a state-of-the-practice component model (i.e., Rubus) and the evaluation of the realized extension is done through the vision system of an existing underwater robot.