Made available in DSpace on 2015-05-08T14:59:57Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivototal.pdf: 3935872 bytes, checksum: 5a4c90590e53b3ea1d71bbe61a628b56 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-07-25 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / The aim of this work is to study the non-local means algorithm and propose techniques to optimize and implement this algorithm for its application in real-time. Two alternatives are suggested for implementation. The first deals with the development of an accelerator card for computers, which has a PCI bus containing specialized hardware that implements the NLM filter. The second implementation uses densely GPU multiprocessor environment, which exists in the parent video. Both proposals significantly accelerates the NLM algorithm, while maintains the same visual quality of traditional software implementations, enabling real-time use. Image denoising is an important area for digital image processing. Recently, its use is becoming more popular due to improvements of of the new acquisition equipments and, thus, the increase of image resolution that favors the occurrence of such perturbations. It is widely studied in the fields of image processing, computer vision and predictive maintenance of electrical substations, motors, tires, building facilities, pipes and fittings, focusing on reducing the noise without removing details of the original image. Several approaches have been proposed for filtering noise. One of such approaches is the non-local method called Non-Local Means (NLM), which uses the entire image rather than local information and stands out as the state of the art. However, a problem in this method is its high computational complexity, which turns its application almost impossible in real time applications, even for small images / O propósito deste trabalho é estudar o algoritmo non-local means(NLM) e propor técnicas para otimizar e implementar o referido algoritmo visando sua aplicação em tempo real. Ao todo são sugeridas duas alternativas de implementação. A primeira trata do desenvolvimento de uma placa aceleradora para computadores que possuam Barramento PCI, contendo um hardware especializado que implementa o Filtro NLM. A segunda implementação utiliza o ambiente densamente multiprocessado GPU, existente nas controladoras de vídeo. As duas propostas aceleraram significativamente o algoritmo NLM, mantendo a mesma qualidade visual das implementações tradicionais em software, tornando possível sua utilização em tempo real. A filtragem de ruídos é uma área importante para o processamento digital de imagens, sendo cada vez mais utilizada devido as melhorias dos novos equipamentos de captação, e o consequente aumento da resolução da imagem, que favorece o aparecimento dessas perturbações. Ela é amplamente estudada nos campos de tratamento de imagens, visão computacional e manutenção preditiva de subestações elétricas, motores, pneus, instalações prediais, tubos e conexões, focando em reduzir os ruídos sem que se remova os detalhes da imagem original. Várias abordagens foram propostas para filtragem de ruídos, uma delas é o método não-local, chamado de Non-Local Means (NLM), que não só utiliza as informações locais, mas a imagem inteira, destaca-se como o estado da arte, porém, há um problema neste método, que é a sua alta complexidade computacional, que o torna praticamente inviável de ser utilizado em aplicações em tempo real, até mesmo para imagens pequenas

Os dispositivos lógicos programáveis pertencentes à família APEX 20K, são configurados no momento da inicialização do sistema com dados armazenados em dispositivos especificamente desenvolvidos para esse fim. Esta família de FPGAs possui uma interface otimizada, permitindo também que microprocessadores os configure de maneira serial ou paralela, síncrona ou assíncronamente. Depois de configurados, estes FPGAs podem ser reconfigurados em tempo real com novos dados de configuração. A reconfiguração em tempo real conduz a inovadoras aplicações de computação reconfigurável. Os dispositivos de configuração disponíveis comercialmente, limitam-se a configurar os FPGAs apenas no momento da inicialização do sistema e sempre com o mesmo arquivo de configuração. Este trabalho apresenta a implementação de um controlador de configuração capaz de gerenciar a configuração e reconfiguração de múltiplos FPGAs, a partir de vários arquivos distintos de configuração. Todo o projeto é desenvolvido, testado e validado através da ferramenta EDA Quartus™ II, que propicia um ambiente de desenvolvimento integrado de projeto, compilação e síntese lógica, simulação e análise de tempo. / The APEX 20K programmable logic devices family, are configured at system power-up with data stored in a specific serial configuration device. This family of FPGAs contain an optimized interface that permits microprocessors to configure APEX 20K devices serially or in parallel, and synchronously or asynchronously. After configured, it can be reconfigured in-circuit by resetting the device and loading new data. Real-time changes lead to innovative reconfigurable computing applications. The commercial available configuration devices limit to configure the APEX 20K devices only on the system power-up and always with the same configuration data file. This work shows a configuration controller implementation that can manage the configuration and reconfiguration of several FPGAs from multiple configuration files. The entire project is developed, tested and validated through the EDA tool Quartus™ II, that provide a integrated package with HDL and schematic design entry, compilation and logic synthesis, full simulation and worst-case timing analysis.

Orientador: Joao Mauricio Rosario / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Faculdade de Engenharia Mecanica / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-11T16:00:59Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Passos_WlamirdeAlmeida_M.pdf: 6622683 bytes, checksum: 09020aa002fe289905bdd3821461cf35 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2008 / Resumo: Durante os últimos anos tem ocorrido uma grande evolução tecnológica na área de sistemas embarcados, abrangendo inovações tanto em hardware como em software. Tais inovações permitem o desenvolvimento de novas metodologias de projeto que levem em conta a facilidade de futuras modificações, modernizações e expansões do sistema projetado. Este trabalho apresenta um estudo de novas ferramentas de projeto para sistemas baseados em lógica reconfigurável. A principal motivação deste trabalho é a apresentação de ferramentas para prototipagem rápida baseadas em computação reconfigurável para implementação de protótipos de sistemas Embarcados. Será abordada a evolução deste tipo de tecnologia bem como os softwares de desenvolvimento disponíveis. Será também abordado um estudo de caso na área de Acionamento e Controle de Sistemas Mecatrônicos bem como a sua implementação e teste utilizando-se a técnica HIL - Hardware In the Loo / Abstract: In the last years, there has been a great technologic evolution in the embedded systems area, covering innovations both in hardware and software. Those innovations allow the development of new project methodologies that considers the facility of future modifications, upgrades and expansions for the system. This work shows a study about new design tools made for systems based on reconfigurable computation. The main motivation of this work is the presentation of tools for fast prototyping based on prototyping seeking the implementation of prototypes of embedded systems. It will be discussed the evolution of this type of technology as well as the available development software. It will be also discussed a case study on mechatronic control system as well as it¿s implementation and tests using Hardware In the Loop (HIL) techniques / Mestrado / Mecanica dos Sólidos e Projeto Mecanico / Mestre em Engenharia Mecânica

A ferramenta ChipCflow vem sendo desenvolvida nos últimos quatro anos, inicialmente a partir de um projeto de arquitetura a fluxo de dados dinâmico em hardware reconfigurável, mas agora como uma ferramenta de compilação. Ela tem como objetivo a execução de algoritmos por meio do modelo de arquitetura a fluxo de dados associado ao conceito de dispositivos parcialmente reconfiguráveis. Sua característica principal é acelerar o tempo de execução de programas escritos em Linguagem de Programação de Alto Nível (LPAN), do inglês, High Level Languages, em particular nas partes mais intensas de processamento. Isso é feito por meio da implementação dessas partes de código diretamente em hardware reconfigurável - utilizando a tecnologia Field-programmable Gate Array (FPGA) - aproveitando ao máximo o paralelismo considerado natural do modelo a fluxo de dados e as características do hardware parcialmente reconfigurável. Neste trabalho, o objetivo é a prova de conceito do processo de partição e do protocolo de comunicação entre as partições definidas a partir de um Grafo de Fluxo de Dados (GFD), para a execução direta em hardware reconfigurável utilizando Reconfiguração Parcial Dinâmica (RPD). Foi necessário elaborar um mecanismo de partição e protocolo de comunicação entre essas partições, uma vez que a RPD insere características tecnológicas limitantes não encontradas em hardwares reconfiguráveis mais tradicionais. O mecanismo criado se mostrou parcialmente adequado à prova de conceito, significando a possibilidade de se executar GFDs na plataforma parcialmente reconfigurável. Todavia, os tempos de reconfiguração inviabilizaram a proposta inicial de se utilizar RPD para diminuir o tempo de tag matching dos GFDs dinâmicos / The ChipCflow tool has been developed over the last four years, initially from an architectural design the flow of Dynamic Data in reconfigurable hardware, but now as a compilation tool. It aims to run algorithms using the model of the data flow architecture associated with the concept of partially reconfigurable devices. Its main feature is to accelerate the execution time of programs written in High Level Languages, particularly in the most intense processing. This is done by implementing those parts of code directly in reconfigurable hardware - using FPGA technology - leveraging the natural parallelism of the data flow model and characteristics of the partially reconfigurable hardware. In this work, the main goal is the proof of concept of the partition process and protocol communication between the partitions defined from Data Flow Graph for direct execution in reconfigurable hardware using Active Partial Reconfiguration. This required a mechanism to partition and a protocol for communication between these partitions, since the Active Partial Reconfiguration inserts technological features limiting not found in traditional reconfigurable hardware. The mechanism developed is show to be partially adequate to the proof of concept, meaning the ability to run Data Flow Graphs in a platform that is partially reconfigurable. However, the reconfiguration time inserts a great overhead into the execution time, which made the proposal of the use of Active Partial Reconfiguration to decrease the time matching Data Flow Graph unfeasible

Sofisticadas técnicas para estimação de modelos baseadas em simulação, os filtros de partículas ou métodos de Monte Carlo Seqüenciais, foram empregadas recentemente para solucionar diversos problemas difícieis no campo da robótica móvel. No entanto, o sucesso dos fitros de partículas limitou-se à computação de parâmetros em espaços de baixa dimensionalidade. Os atuais esforços de pesquisa em robótica móvel têm comecado a explorar certas propriedades estruturais de seus domnios de aplicação que envolvem a utilização de filtros de partculas em espacos de maior dimensão, aumentando consideravelmente a complexidade da simulação envolvida. Simulações estatsticas dessa natureza requerem uma grande quantidade de numeros pseudo-aleatorios que possam ser gerados eficientemente e atendam a certos criterios de qualidade. O processo de geração de numeros pseudo-aleatorios torna-se o ponto crtico de tais aplicações em termos de desempenho. Neste contexto, a computação reconguravel insere-se como uma tecnologia capaz de satisfazer a demanda por alto desempenho das grandes simulações estatsticas pois sistemas baseados em arquiteturas reconguraveis possuem o potencial de mapear computação em hardware visando aumento de eficiência sem comprometer seriamente sua exibilidade. Tecnologias reconguraveis também possui o atrativo de um baixo consumo de energia, uma caracterstica essencial para os futuros robôs moveis embarcados. Esta dissertação apresenta a implementação um sistema embarcado baseado em FPGA e projetado para solucionar o problema de localização de robôs por meio de tecnicas probabilsticas. A parte fundamental de todo este sistema e um veloz gerador de numeros aleatorios mapeado ao hardware reconguravel que foi capaz de atender rígidos criterios estatsticos de qualidade / Sophisticated techniques for estimation of models based on simulation, particle filters or Sequential Monte Carlo Methods, were recently used to solve many difficult problems in the field of mobile robotics. However, the success of particle filters was limited to the computation of parameters in low dimensionality spaces. The current research efforts in mobile robotics have begun to explore some structural properties of their application\'s domain involving the use of particle filters in spaces of a higher dimension, greatly increasing the complexity of the involved simulation. Statistical simulations of this nature require a lot of pseudorandom numbers that can be generated efficiently and meet certain quality criteria. The process of generating pseudorandom number becomes the critical point of such applications in terms of performance. In this context, reconfigurable computing is a technology capable of meeting the demand for high performance of large statistical simulations because systems based on reconfigurable architectures have the potential to map computation to hardware aiming to increase eficiency without a serious drawback in exibility. Reconfigurable technologies are also attractive because of their low energy consume, a essential feature for the future mobile robots. This dissertation presents an implementation of a FPGA based embedded system designed to solve the robot localization problem by the means of probabilistic technics. The fundamental part from the whole system is a fast random number generator mapped to reconfigurable hardware wich atends a rigid quality criteria

Dans cette thèse, nous proposons une architecture reconfigurable scalable et flexible, avec un réseau de communication parallèle « full-duplex switched » ainsi que le modèle d’exécution approprié ce qui nous a permis de redéfinir les paradigmes de calcul, de communication et de reconfiguration dans les systèmes embarqués à haute performance (HPEC). Ces systèmes sont devenus très sophistiqués et consommant des ressources pour trois raisons. Premièrement, ils doivent capturer et traiter des données en temps réel à partir de plusieurs sources d’E/S parallèles. Deuxièmement, ils devraient adapter leurs fonctionnalités selon l’application ou l’environnement. Troisièmement, à cause du parallélisme potentiel des applications, multiples instances de calcul réparties sur plusieurs nœuds sont nécessaires, ce qui rend ces systèmes massivement parallèles. Grace au parallélisme matériel offert par les FPGAs, la logique d’une fonction peut être reproduite plusieurs fois pour traiter des E/S parallèles, faisant du modèle d’exécution « Single Program Multiple Data » (SPMD) un modèle préféré pour les concepteurs d’architectures parallèles sur FPGA. En plus, la fonctionnalité de reconfiguration dynamique est un autre attrait des composants FPGA permettant la réutilisation efficace des ressources matérielles limitées. Le défi avec les systèmes HPEC actuels est qu’ils sont généralement conçus pour répondre à des besoins spécifiques d’une application engendrant l’obsolescence rapide du matériel. Dans cette thèse, nous proposons une architecture qui permet la personnalisation des nœuds de calcul (FPGA), la diffusion des données (E/S, bitstreams) et la reconfiguration de plusieurs nœuds de calcul en parallèle. L’environnement logiciel exploite les attraits du réseau de communication pour implémenter le modèle d’exécution SPMD.Enfin, afin de démontrer les avantages de notre architecture, nous avons mis en place une application d’encodage H.264 sécurisé distribué évolutif avec plusieurs protocoles de communication avioniques pour les données et le contrôle. Nous avons utilisé le protocole « serial Front Panel Data Port (sFPDP) » d’acquisition de données à haute vitesse basé sur le standard FMC pour capturer, encoder et de crypter le flux vidéo. Le système mis en œuvre s’appuie sur 3 FPGA différents, en respectant le modèle d’exécution SPMD. En outre, nous avons également mis en place un système d’E/S modulaire en échangeant des protocoles dynamiquement selon les besoins du système. Nous avons ainsi conçu une architecture évolutive et flexible et un modèle d’exécution parallèle afin de gérer plusieurs sources vidéo d’entrée parallèles. / In this thesis, we propose a scalable and customizable reconfigurable computing platform, with a parallel full-duplex switched communication network, and a software execution model to redefine the computation, communication and reconfiguration paradigms in High Performance Embedded Systems. High Performance Embedded Computing (HPEC) applications are becoming highly sophisticated and resource consuming for three reasons. First, they should capture and process real-time data from several I/O sources in parallel. Second, they should adapt their functionalities according to the application or environment variations within given Size Weight and Power (SWaP) constraints. Third, since they process several parallel I/O sources, applications are often distributed on multiple computing nodes making them highly parallel. Due to the hardware parallelism and I/O bandwidth offered by Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs), application can be duplicated several times to process parallel I/Os, making Single Program Multiple Data (SPMD) the favorite execution model for designers implementing parallel architectures on FPGAs. Furthermore Dynamic Partial Reconfiguration (DPR) feature allows efficient reuse of limited hardware resources, making FPGA a highly attractive solution for such applications. The problem with current HPEC systems is that, they are usually built to meet the needs of a specific application, i.e., lacks flexibility to upgrade the system or reuse existing hardware resources. On the other hand, applications that run on such hardware architectures are constantly being upgraded. Thus there is a real need for flexible and scalable hardware architectures and parallel execution models in order to easily upgrade the system and reuse hardware resources within acceptable time bounds. Thus these applications face challenges such as obsolescence, hardware redesign cost, sequential and slow reconfiguration, and wastage of computing power.Addressing the challenges described above, we propose an architecture that allows the customization of computing nodes (FPGAs), broadcast of data (I/O, bitstreams) and reconfiguration several or a subset of computing nodes in parallel. The software environment leverages the potential of the hardware switch, to provide support for the SPMD execution model. Finally, in order to demonstrate the benefits of our architecture, we have implemented a scalable distributed secure H.264 encoding application along with several avionic communication protocols for data and control transfers between the nodes. We have used a FMC based high-speed serial Front Panel Data Port (sFPDP) data acquisition protocol to capture, encode and encrypt RAW video streams. The system has been implemented on 3 different FPGAs, respecting the SPMD execution model. In addition, we have also implemented modular I/Os by swapping I/O protocols dynamically when required by the system. We have thus demonstrated a scalable and flexible architecture and a parallel runtime reconfiguration model in order to manage several parallel input video sources. These results represent a conceptual proof of a massively parallel dynamically reconfigurable next generation embedded computers.

Cache-based, general purpose CPUs perform at a small fraction of their maximum floating point performance when executing memory-intensive simulations, such as those required for many scientific computing problems. This is due to the memory bottleneck that is encountered with large arrays that must be stored in dynamic RAM. A system of FPGAs, with a large enough memory bandwidth, and clocked at only hundreds of MHz can outperform a CPU clocked at GHz in terms of floating point performance. An FPGA core designed for a target performance that does not unnecessarily exceed the memory imposed bottleneck can then be distributed, along with multiple memory interfaces, into a scalable architecture that overcomes the bandwidth limitation of a single interface. Interconnected cores can work together to solve a scientific computing problem and exploit a bandwidth that is the sum of the bandwidth available from all of their connected memory interfaces. The implementation demonstrates this concept of scalability with two memory interfaces through the use of available FPGA prototyping platforms. Even though the FPGAs operate at 133 MHz, which is twenty one times slower than an AMD Phenom X4 processor operating at 2.8 GHz, the system of two FPGAs performs eight times slower than the processor for the example problem of SMVM in heat transfer. However, the system is demonstrated to be scalable with a run-time that decreases linearly with respect to the available memory bandwidth. The floating point performance of a single board implementation is 12 GFlops which doubles to 24 GFlops for a two board implementation, for a gather or scatter operation on matrices of varying sizes.

As reconfigurable devices' capacities and the complexity of applications that use them increase, the need for self-reliance of deployed systems becomes increasingly prominent. A Sustainable Modular Adaptive Redundancy Technique (SMART) composed of a dual-layered organic system is proposed, analyzed, implemented, and experimentally evaluated. SMART relies upon a variety of self-regulating properties to control availability, energy consumption, and area used, in dynamically-changing environments that require high degree of adaptation. The hardware layer is implemented on a Xilinx Virtex-4 Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) to provide self-repair using a novel approach called a Reconfigurable Adaptive Redundancy System (RARS). The software layer supervises the organic activities within the FPGA and extends the self-healing capabilities through application-independent, intrinsic, evolutionary repair techniques to leverage the benefits of dynamic Partial Reconfiguration (PR). A SMART prototype is evaluated using a Sobel edge detection application. This prototype is shown to provide sustainability for stressful occurrences of transient and permanent fault injection procedures while still reducing energy consumption and area requirements. An Organic Genetic Algorithm (OGA) technique is shown capable of consistently repairing hard faults while maintaining correct edge detector outputs, by exploiting spatial redundancy in the reconfigurable hardware. A Monte Carlo driven Continuous Markov Time Chains (CTMC) simulation is conducted to compare SMART's availability to industry-standard Triple Modular Technique (TMR) techniques. Based on nine use cases, parameterized with realistic fault and repair rates acquired from publically available sources, the results indicate that availability is significantly enhanced by the adoption of fast repair techniques targeting aging-related hard-faults. Under harsh environments, SMART is shown to improve system availability from 36.02% with lengthy repair techniques to 98.84% with fast ones. This value increases to "five nines" (99.9998%) under relatively more favorable conditions. Lastly, SMART is compared to twenty eight standard TMR benchmarks that are generated by the widely-accepted BL-TMR tools. Results show that in seven out of nine use cases, SMART is the recommended technique, with power savings ranging from 22% to 29%, and area savings ranging from 17% to 24%, while still maintaining the same level of availability.

Software radio is a radio that is substantially defined in software and whose physical layer behavior can be significantly altered through changes to its software. As a primary goal of software radio is the ability to support existing and future wireless protocols, software radio necessitates the use of a rapidly reprogrammable baseband processing solution. However third generation wireless protocols represent a significant increase in complexity over second generation protocols. Due to the natural performance sacrifices that must be made when moving an application from an Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) to a general purpose processor or a digital signal processor, it is feared that reprogrammable processing solutions may not suffice for the emerging wireless protocols, which would significantly hinder the realization of software radio, particularly in the handheld domain where power consumption and chip area are critical. Recently, the Configurable Computing Lab at Virginia Tech developed a new breed of reprogrammable processor which they called "custom computing machine" (CCM). Representing a dramatic departure from traditional architectures used for baseband processing solutions, CCMs utilize a large number of optimized and programmable processing cores connected through a programmable mesh. Due to this architectural approach, CCMs have been promoted as supplying a level of processing power and power efficiency similar to ASICs while providing a level of reconfigurability similar to that of a DSP. Subsequently, Dr. Srikathyayani Srikanteswara proposed a new software radio architecture, known as the Layered Radio Architecture, which is intended to facilitate the inclusion of CCMs into a software radio. The primary goal of the research presented in this thesis is to demonstrate how a particular CCM, Stallion, can be used within the Layered Radio Architecture to provide sufficient processing performance, power efficiency, and reconfigurability to meet the constraints of the handheld domain through implementations of a single user adaptive receiver with adaptive complex filtering and a W-CDMA downlink rake receiver. These metrics are measured from a detailed simulation of Stallion and the Configuration Layer of the Layered Radio Architecture using advanced object oriented programming techniques that facilitate the inclusion of statistics gathering routines into normal operation. To provide perspective, these statistics are compared to the performance that could be expected from an implementation on a top-of-the-line DSP. / Master of Science

Approved for public release, distribution is unlimited / This thesis outlines the development, programming, and testing a logical interface between a radar system, the AN/SPS-65(V)1, and a general-purpose reconfigurable computing platform, the SRC Computer, Inc. model, the SRC-6E. To confirm the proper operation of the interface and associated subcomponents, software was developed to perform basic radar signal processing. The interface, as proven by the signal processing results, accurately reflects radar imagery generated by the radar system when compared to maps of the surrounding area. The research accomplished here will allow follow on research to evaluate the potential benefits reconfigurable computing platforms offer for radar signal processing. / Captain, United States Marine Corps