Free Software Radio

Task Scheduling of Software-Defined Radio Kernels in Heterogeneous Chips: Opportunities and Challenges

AW1.120
Augusto Vega
Title: Task Scheduling of Software-Defined Radio Kernels in Heterogeneous Chips: Opportunities and Challenges Speaker: Augusto Vega, IBM Research (NY, USA) Abstract: The proliferation of 'heterogeneous' chip multiprocessors in recent years has reached unprecedented levels, especially in the context of IoT and distributed edge computing (e.g. connected and autonomous vehicles). By combining the right set of hardware resources (cores, accelerators, chip interconnects and memory technology) along with an adequate software stack (operating system and programming interface), heterogeneous chips have become an effective high-performance and low-power computing alternative. However, heterogeneous architectures come with new challenges. Fundamentally, the complexity derived from the design's heterogeneous nature challenges the effective scheduling of tasks (processes), a scenario that becomes even more critical when real-time execution deadlines must be met. This is particularly important in the context of GNU Radio, given that its underlying scheduler is completely unaware of chip heterogeneity today. Early stage prototyping and evaluation of GNU Radio scheduling policies in heterogeneous platforms becomes a valuable asset in the design process of a future GNU Radio scheduler. In this talk, we present a new open-source simulator for fast prototyping of task scheduling policies, called STOMP (Scheduling Techniques Optimization in heterogeneous Multi-Processors) [1]. It is written in Python and implemented as a queue-based discrete-event simulator with a convenient interface that allows users and researchers to "plug in" new scheduling policies in a simple manner. We also present a systematic approach to task scheduling in heterogeneous platforms through the evaluation of a set of progressively more "intelligent" scheduling policies using STOMP. We rely on synthetic kernels representative of a GNU Radio application [2], including functions like Viterbi decoding and fast Fourier transform (FFT) that have to be scheduled across general-purpose cores, GPUs or hardware accelerators to meet the application's real-time deadlines. We will show results indicating that relatively simple scheduling policies can satisfy real-time requirements when they are properly designed to take advantage of the heterogeneous nature of the underlying chip multiprocessor. [1] STOMP. URL: https://github.com/IBM/stomp [2] ERA. URL: https://github.com/IBM/era Desired slot time: 30 mins

Additional information

Type devroom

More sessions

2/2/20
Free Software Radio
AW1.120
Greetings and plans for the day and future
2/2/20
Free Software Radio
Brennan Ashton
AW1.120
There are so many great open source libraries and tools that people have written that make up the software defined radio ecosystem, but we have unfortunately created a high bar for consumption of this software, and an even higher bar for using modern versions. In this presentation we look at how we can use modern C/C package management with Conan to simplify the lives of our users who want to use the latest versions without living in dependency hell.
2/2/20
Free Software Radio
Josh Morman
AW1.120
We examine the use of equalizers in wireless communication systems, how these are implemented in GNU Radio, and how the existing GR equalizer functionality can be extended with a new OOT using training-based adaptation. The theory of multipath channels, ISI, and how to overcome with adaptive equalization will be reviewed and shown with interactive flowgraphs. Please note that this talk was originally scheduled to be given at 2:30 PM and will now take place at 10:00 AM.
2/2/20
Free Software Radio
Marcus Müller
AW1.120
GNU Radio is the widest used software radio stack for research and development on PC-style hardware, having enabled hundreds of high-rate applications. I'll discuss where its limits are, where we need to stick to GNU Radio's recipe for SDR success, and where to disruptively address its architectural shortcomings
2/2/20
Free Software Radio
John Brunhaver
AW1.120
Abstract: Radio based communication systems and imagers operate under real-time constraints. Off-loading computes to an FPGA seems like a solution to speeding-up your application but comes with many pitfalls. Specifically, software-oriented implementations fail to achieve the required interface bandwidths or computational throughput required to see a speed-up. In this talk, we will discuss the organization of common compute motif's in software-defined-radio and their complexity in time and ...
2/2/20
Free Software Radio
Daniel Estévez
AW1.120
gr-satellites is a GNU Radio out-of-tree module with the goal of decoding every Amateur satellite. Currently it supports more than 80 different satellites. After GNU Radio 3.8 was released last summer, gr-satellites is seeing a lot of development and important changes. A refactored version, which will be released as gr-satellites 3.0 is on the works. This version brings more modularity to avoid code duplication, more flexibility in the input and output that the user can employ, and the idea to ...
2/2/20
Free Software Radio
Andrey Rodionov
AW1.120
Java for digital signal processing why java? how to do digital signal processing in Java. Some examples decoding LRPT (with images), BPSK (with real data) Working base station network how it differs from satnogs testing, code coverage. Enterprise approach for building communication software Plans. Q&A