Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering

University of California, Davis

EEC-282 – Embedded System Design (formerly known as hardware/software Codesign)

Spring Quarter 2005

Overview of the Course

Embedded systems are everywhere. The key features of embedded systems are:

Real-time
Flexibility
Adaptive
Low Power
Cost
Size
Diverse

Design and analysis of real-time systems encompasses many disciplines:

a) Applications

b) Models and Abstractions

c) Optimization Algorithms

d) Networking

e) Software Development

f) Operating Systems

g) System-level Architecture

h) Processors

There are separate courses for each of these topics. I will assume that you have a basic (undergraduate level) understanding of operating systems, programming languages, networking, algorithms, computer systems and processor architectures. Furthermore, I will assume you have basic training in mathematics, especially calculus and probability.

We will explore the issues in embedded system design from computer systems architecture perspective. We will use multimedia (video) streaming as the application to study embedded systems. Specifically we will consider the design issues of an intelligent media gateway, which is shown in the figure below where it is called an Access Point.

An intelligent media gateway is device that connects a home or an office network to the Internet and provides a variety of services to the end-users. We will focus on delivering streaming media (video) to the laptops and handhelds efficiently by adapting the video stream to the resource constraints of the client device and the local network. We will explore the tradeoffs between resource utilization at the receiver and in the network and the resultant quality of the video streaming. We will use the latest network processor for Intel and the associated development kit and software to study the various aspects of embedded system design.

Instructor	Dr. Venkatesh Akella, 2117 Kemper Hall
Email and Office Hours	akella@ucdavis.edu Tuesday 5PM-6PM
Classroom	PHYGEO 130
Class Timing	Tuesday-Thursday 9:00 – 10:20 AM

Plan for the quarter

As noted above, embedded systems engineering is not a single subject but a discipline much like computer engineering or structural engineering or RF/microwave or control engineering. So, there is no single book or syllabus that covers the whole field. So, the best way to proceed is to treat this as a team research project, where we will learn by solving a real-world problem, taking all the related constraints into account. So, you should pay particular attention to the following:

This is an advanced graduate course in computer engineering, which means you should be really interested in this material to take this class.

The course will be research oriented, which means you have to be a proactive participant in the course and be prepared to explore new things on your own and come up with creative solutions.
There is no TA for this class, so don’t expect any babysitting whatsoever. We will work as a team and learn from each other.
There will be no exams.
Your grade will depend on the final research paper, homework and class participation.

References

http://scholar.google.com/ (Google research paper search engine)
http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/ (You can find most computer science related papers here)
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/ (IEEE Online Journals and Conferences)
http://gateway2.ovid.com/ (University of California, Online Databases)
http://portal.acm.org/ (ACM Digital Library)
http://ixp4xx-osdg.sourceforge.net/ (Project Related Information)

Project Related References - Application

(a) D. Wu, Yiwei Hou, H. J. Lee, T. Chiang, Y. Zhang and Jonathan Chao On End-to-End Architecture For Transporting MPEG-4 Video Over the Internet, IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology, Sept. 2000.

A Nice Overview of MPEG-4 Streaming Over the Internet

(b) B. Girod and N. Farber, Wireless Video, Chapter 12, Compressed Video over Networks, Editors: M. T. Sun and A. Reibman, November, 1999

A Nice Overview of Wireless Video

(c) B. Girod and M. Kalman, Y. J. Liang, and R. Zhang, Advances in Channel-Adaptive Video Streaming, ICIP 2002, Invited Paper

Overview of channel adaptive streaming, Figure 1 has some architectures for a media gateway that might be useful.

(d) Philip A. Chou and Z. Miao, Rate-Distortion Optimized Streaming of Packetized Media, IEEE Transactions on Multimedia, 2001.

This is the paper that introduced Rate-Distortion Optimized Packet Scheduling. This is what you will try to implement.

(e) M. van der schaar and D. S. Turaga, Content-Based Cross-layer Packetization and Retransmission Strategies for Wireless Multimedia Transmission, University of California, Davis, 2005

This is a paper on packet aggregation

Project Related References – Architecture and Hardware

(f) M. Venkatachalam, P. Chandra, and R. Yavatkar, A Highly Flexible, Distributed Multiprocessor Architecture for Network Processing, Computer Networks, vol. 41, pages 563-586, 2003

This paper described IXP2400 architecture and ATM Traffic Shaping and Voice Gateway Application.

(g) A. N. SLOSS, D. SYMES and C. Wright, ARM SYSTEM DEVELOPER’S GUIDE, Designing and Optimizing System Software, Morgan Kauffman, 2004

This is good textbook on ARM software development. Worth Buying

(h)Intel XScale Architecture Manual

The definitive guide to Intel XScale Core

(i) Intel IXP425 Hardware Development Manual

The definitive guide to the Intel IXP platform

(j) http://ixp4xx-osdg.sourceforge.net

One-stop shop for Programming IXP425 Platform. Contains pointers to ARM simulators, compilers, emulators and everything else that you might need.

Homework 1

Read papers (a), (b), (c), (d), (e) and (f)
Write a one-page summary for paper number (a), (d), (e) and (f) paper.
Due Thursday April 14, 2005

Project Milestone 1 (DEADLINE MAY 3, 2005)

Demuxing the video/audio stream, extracting the packet dependency graph and packet attributes
Submit a short 3 page writeup including an excerpt of the video trace data which should look like this:

Frame Number, Deadline, FrameType, Qy Qu Qv

0 0.000000 I 6528 28.385500 34.609100 35.005299

3 0.100000 P 696 28.009600 34.429699 34.790401

1 0.033333 B 344 28.328400 34.446701 34.807499

2 0.066667 B 384 28.201599 34.259899 34.894501

6 0.200000 P 576 27.970100 34.294201 34.827499

4 0.133333 B 272 28.186501 34.501900 34.904999

5 0.166667 B 248 28.161800 34.233398 34.922401

9 0.300000 P 456 28.231100 34.664799 34.521400

7 0.233333 B 152 28.292101 34.688400 34.630699

8 0.266667 B 168 28.280899 34.439899 34.543301

12 0.400000 I 6440 28.352900 34.682499 34.896900

10 0.333333 B 1192 28.853600 34.680401 34.812500

11 0.366667 B 1040 28.718800 34.527500 35.125401

15 0.500000 P 912 30.606400 35.915401 36.275101

13 0.433333 B 560 29.374500 35.617298 35.939701

14 0.466667 B 616 30.734600 36.384602 36.354401

18 0.600000 P 200 30.917500 36.342701 36.143200

16 0.533333 B 80 30.885700 36.046299 36.339500

17 0.566667 B 80 31.162100 36.026199 36.058899

21 0.700000 P 264 30.790199 36.397598 36.180302

…..

Video Trace References

Video Trace Data from Arizona State University – http://trace.eas.asu.edu/
Patrick Seeling, Martin Reisslein, and Beshan Kulapala Network Performance Evaluation Using Frame Size and Quality Traces of Single-Layer and Two-Layer Video: A Tutorial" IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials Vol. 6, No. 2 Pages 58—78 Third Quarter 2004
Traffic and Quality Characterization of Scalable Encoded Video: A Large-Scale Trace-Based Study, Part 1: Overview and Definitions

ARM/Xscale Simulation Tools

· Simple Scalar Website www.simplescalar.com

· Princeton University ARM Architecture Simulator

Project Milestone 2 (Deadline May 10, 2005)

PACKETIZER - Convert the video traces into packets and estimate the distortion
SIMPLE SCHEDULER - Implement a simple EDF scheduler
REPACKETIZER – Optimized Packetizer

Implement them in C and estimate their performance using Simplescalar on the XScale Processor

Project Milestone 3 (Deadline May XX, 2005)

EXPLORE JOINT PACKETIZATION and SCHEDULING FOR ENERGY and NETWORK BANDWIDTH OPTIMIZATION