TOUCHMORE: Automatic Customizable Tool-chain for Heterogeneous Multicore Platform Software Development

Starting date
September 1, 2011
Duration (months)
36
Departments
Computer Science, Department of Engineering for Innovation Medicine
Managers or local contacts
Fummi Franco

Recent trends in embedded system architectures brought a rapid shift towards multicore, heterogeneous
and reconfigurable platforms. This makes chip design enormously complex and imposes a large effort for
the programmers to develop their applications. For this reason, new and more efficient tools for software
development are needed to ensure software productivity and time to market of new applications. In particular, the
automation of the software design process starting from high level models all-the-way down to a customized and
implementation on specific architectures is a key factor to increase programmer productivity.
The ToucHMore project will develop software tools that facilitate energy efficient and robust software for
Heterogeneous Multicore Systems (HeMCS) with the goal to reduce the time-to-market in the design of such
systems by at least 15%, as well as the cost of software design through the automation process by 20%.
In more detail, the center of the methodology is the high level modeling language (UML/SysML) that will be
used to describe the target platform and application. High level modelling allows an architectural independent
description of the application and for this reason it is prone to customization for different architectural templates.
In ToucHMore, customization will be performed in an automated way through automated generation of parallel
code for multicore tiles and the required mechanisms to manage reconfigurable DSPs/accelerators.
In addition, the ToucHMore tool-chain customization environment will focus on energy efficiency and robustness
of the generated code, where the uncertainties due to fabrications of transistors in nanometer technologies
will be hidden, thus mitigating their impact in terms of energy and performance. From a research perspective,
ToucHMore is a pioneering project from the perspective of taking a pragmatic approach to bring variability issues
into the software design flow. Together with the automatic toolchain customization strategy coupled with high
level modeling, these contribution will give the European research on embedded software a leading position.
The project results will be commercially exploited by the SME ATEGO as a specialised software tool vendor and
by the company AKHELA that is an IT services and Embedded Systems provider to large scale companies in
areas such as automotive, avionics and consumer electronics. The project results will strengthen their position
in their respective markets by enabling the production of products faster and more timely than the world wide
competitors and it is expected that they will have a manifold return on their investment. The five research
institutions will use the gained knowledge to enrich their teaching and research activities enabling them to stay at
the forefront of technology and substantiating their prestige in the scientific community.

Sponsors:

Unione Europea
Funds: assigned and managed by the department
Syllabus: EUROPA - Progetti Europei

Project participants

Nicola Bombieri
Full Professor
Emad Samuel Malki Ebeid
Franco Fummi
Full Professor
Valerio Guarnieri

Activities

Research facilities

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