Transcript p1014_williams_s

The University of Queensland
School of Information Technology & Electrical Engineering
Reconfigurable Linux for Spaceflight Applications
John Williams and Neil Bergmann, School of ITEE
The University of Queensland, Australia
Future space missions will demand
unprecedented levels of on-board
computing, beyond traditional roles
such as avionics and spacecraft
management. Applications such as
virtual presence and telerobotics,
and real time data analysis and
reduction, will call for more general
purpose computing resources. They
will also require orders of magnitude
performance increases over presentday space computing systems.
P1 and P2
communicate via
shared memory
Microblaze
Software
Process
P2
P3 and P4
communicate via
pipes
Shadow
process
P 1'
Hardware
Process
P1
Linux Kernel
P5 and P6
communicate via
dual port shared
memory
Microblaze
Reconfigurable Linux refers to the use of
Software
Process
P6
Software
Process
P3
Shadow
Process
P 5'
Shadow
Process
P 4'
Hardware
FIFO
Hardware
Process
P4
Linux Kernel
System Bus
Reconfigurable computing has been often
identified as an enabling technology for such
next-generation
spaceflight
computing
systems. High performance, fault-tolerance,
design flexibility and reuse, and postdeployment
functional
re-targeting
are
characteristics that support this view. However
much of this potential remains untapped.
A reconfigurable operating system forms a
contract between the system hardware and the
application developer. Previous spaceflight
applications of reconfigurable logic typically
are very tightly coupled to surrounding
systems and circuitry. A general purpose
platform requires a broader, more flexible
development and deployment environment.
MAPLD 2004
Shared Memory /
Semaphore Controller
Dual-port memory
Hardware
Process
P5
embedded Linux on reconfigurable
computing platforms utilising either hard
or
soft
processor
cores,
with
customisations that integrate the logic
fabric into the operating system. We
have previously ported the Linux kernel
to the Xilinx Microblaze soft processor
core, providing source-level portability
with desktop Linux systems, on a
reconfigurable computer.
Existing
scientific codes can be compiled and run
on this platform with little or no
modification.
Our ongoing research focuses on extending
Requirements of a Reconfigurable Operating System
• support sequential (processor-based) execution;
• offer interoperability with existing general
purpose computing infrastructure;
• provide a process model that seamlessly
supports hardware, software, and hybrid
processes;
• provide a logic management interface;
• support integration of hardware components
developed in a variety of tool flows;
• be scaleable, supporting single-chip, multi-chip
and multi-board computing systems.
Reconfigurable Linux to meet the requirements
outlined above. Previous experimental work
has demonstrated self-reconfiguring Linux
systems, with the logic fabric mapped as an
operating system resource.
Other work
includes integration of a hardware process
model into the Linux kernel.
Widespread
acceptance
of reconfigurable
computing for space applications requires a
flexible, broad based operating system. Linux
is a natural platform upon which to build the
next generation of advanced spaceflight
computing systems.