Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Direct Execution of Esterel Programs on Reactive Processors, Dr. Partha Roop, University of Auckland, New Zealand

Direct Execution of Esterel Programs on Reactive Processors 

Dr. Partha Roop
University of Auckland, New Zealand

Time: 11:00, Feb 25, 2005
Place: Coover 2222

Abstract: This seminar proposes a new reactive multiprocessor for direct execution of Esterel programs. While Esterel programs have been compiled to both hardware and software, each has its own limitations. Hardware compilers, while being efficient, are quite inflexible. Software compilers, on the other hand, are flexible, but produce both bulky and inefficient code. This is because of the generation of generic intermediate code that is independent of the underlying architecture. We propose an intermediate approach, using architecture specific compilation. Firstly, a suitable multiprocessor (called EMPEROR) is designed where each individual processor has native Esterel-like instructions. These processors are synchronized exactly like Esterel using a Thread Control Unit (TCU) that generates the Esterel tick event using barrier synchronization. Subsequently, a compiler is developed that takes advantage of the features available on EMPEROR to generate direct machine code from the Esterel source. Benchmarking results using the proposed approach reveal significant improvement in code quality compared to conventional compilation, both in terms of code size and execution time.