Current global business competition has resulted in significant challenges for manufacturing and production sectors focused on shorter product lifecyc1es, more diverse and customized products as well as cost pressures from competitors and customers. To remain competitive, manufacturers, particularly in automotive industry, require the next generation of manufacturing paradigms supporting flexible and reconfigurable production systems that allow quick system changeovers for various types of products. In addition, closer integration of shop floor and business systems is required as indicated by the research efforts in investigating "Agile and Collaborative Manufacturing Systems" in supporting the production unit throughout the manufacturing lifecycles. The integration of a business enterprise with its shop-floor and lifecycle supply partners is currently only achieved through complex proprietary solutions due to differences in technology, particularly between automation and business systems. The situation is further complicated by the diverse types of automation control devices employed. Recently, the emerging technology of Service Oriented Architecture's (SOA's) and Web Services (WS) has been demonstrated and proved successful in linking business applications. The adoption of this Web Services approach at the automation level, that would enable a seamless integration of business enterprise and a shop-floor system, is an active research topic within the automotive domain. If successful, reconfigurable automation systems formed by a network of collaborative autonomous and open control platform in distributed, loosely coupled manufacturing environment can be realized through a unifying platform of WS interfaces for devices communication. The adoption of SOA- Web Services on embedded automation devices can be achieved employing Device Profile for Web Services (DPWS) protocols which encapsulate device control functionality as provided services (e.g. device I/O operation, device state notification, device discovery) and business application interfaces into physical control components of machining automation. This novel approach supports the possibility of integrating pervasive enterprise applications through unifying Web Services interfaces and neutral Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) message communication between control systems and business applications over standard Ethernet-Local Area Networks (LAN's). In addition, the re-configurability of the automation system is enhanced via the utilisation of Web Services throughout an automated control, build, installation, test, maintenance and reuse system lifecycle via device self-discovery provided by the DPWS protocol.

<p>Background: Many systems that Enea Epact AB develops for theirs customers communicates with computers. In order to meet the customers demands on cost effective solutions, Enea Epact wants to know if it is possible to implement a gigabit Ethernet controller in an FPGA. The controller shall be designed with the intent to meet the requirements of IEEE 802.3. </p><p>Aim: Find out if it is feasible to implement a gigabit Ethernet controller using an FPGA. In the meaning of feasible, certain constraints for size, speed and device must be met. </p><p>Method: Get an insight of the standard IEEE 802.3 and make a rough design of a gigabit Ethernet controller in order to identify parts in the standard that might cause problem when implemented in an FPGA. Implement the selected parts and evaluate the results. </p><p>Conclusion: It is possible to implement a gigabit Ethernet controller using an FPGA and the FPGA does not have to be a state-of-the-art device.</p>

Embedded applications have become more and more complex, increasing the demands on the communication network. For reasons such as safety and usability, there are real-time constraints that must be met. Also, to offer high performance, network protocols should offer efficient user services aimed at specific types of communication. At the same time, it is desirable to design and implement embedded networks with reduced cost and development time, which means using available hardware for standard networks. To that end, there is a trend towards using switched Ethernet for embedded systems because of its hight bit rate and low cost. Unfortunately, since switched Ethernet is not specifically designed for embedded systems, it has several limitations such as poor support for QoS because of FCFS queuing policy and high protocol overhead. This thesis contributes towards fulfilling these requirements by developing (i) real-time analytical frameworks for providing QoS guarantees in packet-switched networks and (II) packet-merging techniques to reduce the protocol overhead. We have developed two real-time analytical frameworks for networks with FCFS queuing in the switches, one for FCFS queuing in the source nodes and one for EDF queuing in the source nodes. The correctness and tightness of the real-time analytical frameworks for different network components in a singel-switch neetwork are given by strict theoretical proofs, and the performance of our end-to-end analyses is evaluated by simulations. In conjunction with this, we have compared our results to Network Calculus (NC), a commonly used analytical scheme for FCFS queuing. Our comparison study shows that our anlysis is more accurate than NC for singel-switch networks. To reduce the protocol overhead, we have proposed two active switched Ethernet approaches, one for real-time many-to-many communication and the other for the real-time short message traffic that is often present in embedded applications. A significant improvement in performance achieved by using our proposed active networks is demonstrated. Although our approaches are exemplified using switched Ethernet, the general approaches are not limited to switched Ethernet networks but can easily be moified to other similar packet-switched networks.

This research focused on the design and implementation of an Intelligent Modular Controller (IMC) architecture designed to be reconfigurable over a robust network. The design incorporates novel communication, hardware, and software architectures. This was motivated by current industrial needs for distributed control systems due to growing demand for less complexity, more processing power, flexibility, and greater fault tolerance. To this end, three main contributions were made. <p>Most distributed control architectures depend on multi-tier heterogeneous communication networks requiring linking devices and/or complex middleware. In this study, first, a communication architecture was proposed and implemented with a homogenous network employing the ubiquitous Ethernet for both real-time and non real-time communication. This was achieved by a producer-consumer coordination model for real-time data communication over a segmented network, and a client-server model for point-to-point transactions. The protocols deployed use a Time-Triggered (TT) approach to schedule real-time tasks on the network. Unlike other TT approaches, the scheduling mechanism does not need to be configured explicitly when controller nodes are added or removed. An implicit clock synchronization technique was also developed to complement the architecture. Second, a reconfigurable mechanism based on an auto-configuration protocol was developed. Modules on the network use this protocol to automatically detect themselves, establish communication, and negotiate for a desired configuration. Third, the research demonstrated hardware/software co-design as a contribution to the growing discipline of mechatronics. The IMC consists of a motion controller board designed and prototyped in-house, and a Java microcontroller. An IMC is mapped to each machine/robot axis, and an additional IMC can be configured to serve as a real-time coordinator. The entire architecture was implemented in Java, thus reinforcing uniformity, simplicity, modularity, and openness. Evaluation results showed the potential of the flexible controller to meet medium to high performance machining requirements.

This research focused on the design and implementation of an Intelligent Modular Controller (IMC) architecture designed to be reconfigurable over a robust network. The design incorporates novel communication, hardware, and software architectures. This was motivated by current industrial needs for distributed control systems due to growing demand for less complexity, more processing power, flexibility, and greater fault tolerance. To this end, three main contributions were made. <p>Most distributed control architectures depend on multi-tier heterogeneous communication networks requiring linking devices and/or complex middleware. In this study, first, a communication architecture was proposed and implemented with a homogenous network employing the ubiquitous Ethernet for both real-time and non real-time communication. This was achieved by a producer-consumer coordination model for real-time data communication over a segmented network, and a client-server model for point-to-point transactions. The protocols deployed use a Time-Triggered (TT) approach to schedule real-time tasks on the network. Unlike other TT approaches, the scheduling mechanism does not need to be configured explicitly when controller nodes are added or removed. An implicit clock synchronization technique was also developed to complement the architecture. Second, a reconfigurable mechanism based on an auto-configuration protocol was developed. Modules on the network use this protocol to automatically detect themselves, establish communication, and negotiate for a desired configuration. Third, the research demonstrated hardware/software co-design as a contribution to the growing discipline of mechatronics. The IMC consists of a motion controller board designed and prototyped in-house, and a Java microcontroller. An IMC is mapped to each machine/robot axis, and an additional IMC can be configured to serve as a real-time coordinator. The entire architecture was implemented in Java, thus reinforcing uniformity, simplicity, modularity, and openness. Evaluation results showed the potential of the flexible controller to meet medium to high performance machining requirements.

Aufbauend auf dem voranschreitenden Übergang zentralistischer Steuerungskonzepte über die Dezentralisierung hin zum verteilten System soll ein echtzeitfähiges Steuerungskonzept für die Antriebssynchronisation zur Patientenbewegung als lokal abgeschlossenes System erarbeitet werden. Dabei sollen Grundlagen echtzeitfähiger Steuerungstechnik, verteilter Systeme, der Prozesssynchronisation sowie entsprechende Kommunikationssysteme vorgestellt, bestehende Lösungen diskutiert und aus den Erkenntnissen entsprechende Konzeptvorschläge für die Lösung der Aufgabenstellung gemacht werden. Im zweiten Teil dieser Arbeit soll aus den gewonnen Erkenntnissen und dem voranschreitenden Erfordernis der weltweiten Vernetzung technischer Systeme ein Konzept für die Integration und den echtzeitfähigen Zugriff auf dezentrale Peripheriekomponenten in das Internet erarbeitet werden. Für beide Teilaufgaben sollen Lösungsschritte aufgezeigt und evaluiert werden. Eine kritische Betrachtung der vorgestellten Konzepte erfolgt auf Basis bereits erfolgter industrieller Anwendung sowie in der Vorstellung einer zum Patent angemeldeten Lösung für den webbasierten Zugriff auf dezentral angeordnete Steuerungskomponenten.

La recherche dans le domaine des systèmes contrôlés en réseau a considérablement évolué depuis qu'Ethernet est de plus en plus utilisé en remplacement des traditionnels réseaux locaux industriels. Si ce choix d'Ethernet se justifie par sa faculté intrinsèque à supporter toutes les communications de l'entreprise (du bureau à l'atelier), il s'accorde difficilement avec les contraintes temporelles des applications de contrôle / commande distribuées. Contrairement aux réseaux de terrain, l'indéterminisme de l'accès à la voie d'Ethernet ne permet pas de garantir le respect des contraintes temporelles strictes.<br />La contribution de cette thèse est la définition d'une approche analytique permettant de majorer les délais de communication de bout en bout dans les systèmes contrôlés en réseau lorsqu'ils reposent sur une architecture Ethernet commutée. Les travaux se sont focalisés sur l'adaptation de la théorie du calcul réseau à ce type d'environnement. Dans ce cadre, cette thèse développe la modélisation d'un commutateur IEEE 802.1D ainsi qu'une méthode de calcul des délais de bout en bout basée sur l'augmentation du volume des rafales. Plusieurs expérimentations réelles ont permis de valider l'efficacité des bornes obtenues par calcul.<br />Outre l'évaluation de performances, ces travaux s'intéressent également à la Classification de Service (IEEE 802.1D/p) et à l'optimisation de l'ordonnancement des trames sur Ethernet. Cette thèse montre enfin comment une méthode d'évaluation de performances peut être utilisée pour dimensionner et optimiser la conception d'architectures Ethernet commutées.

The broadcast function MPI_Bcast() from the MPI-1.1 standard is one of the most heavily used collective operations for the message passing programming paradigm. This diploma thesis makes use of a feature called "Multicast", which is supported by several network technologies (like Ethernet or InfiniBand), to create an efficient MPI_Bcast() implementation, especially for large communicators and small-sized messages. A preceding analysis of existing real-world applications leads to an algorithm which does not only perform well for synthetical benchmarks but also even better for a wide class of parallel applications. The finally derived broadcast has been implemented for the open source MPI library "Open MPI" using IP multicast. The achieved results prove that the new broadcast is usually always better than existing point-to-point implementations, as soon as the number of MPI processes exceeds the 8 node boundary. The performance gain reaches a factor of 4.9 on 342 nodes, because the new algorithm scales practically independently of the number of involved processes. / Die Broadcastfunktion MPI_Bcast() aus dem MPI-1.1 Standard ist eine der meistgenutzten kollektiven Kommunikationsoperationen des nachrichtenbasierten Programmierparadigmas. Diese Diplomarbeit nutzt die Multicastfähigkeit, die von mehreren Netzwerktechnologien (wie Ethernet oder InfiniBand) bereitgestellt wird, um eine effiziente MPI_Bcast() Implementation zu erschaffen, insbesondere für große Kommunikatoren und kleinere Nachrichtengrößen. Eine vorhergehende Analyse von existierenden parallelen Anwendungen führte dazu, dass der neue Algorithmus nicht nur bei synthetischen Benchmarks gut abschneidet, sondern sein Potential bei echten Anwendungen noch besser entfalten kann. Der letztendlich daraus entstandene Broadcast wurde für die Open-Source MPI Bibliothek "Open MPI" entwickelt und basiert auf IP Multicast. Die erreichten Ergebnisse belegen, dass der neue Broadcast üblicherweise immer besser als jegliche Punkt-zu-Punkt Implementierungen ist, sobald die Anzahl von MPI Prozessen die Grenze von 8 Knoten überschreitet. Der Geschwindigkeitszuwachs erreicht einen Faktor von 4,9 bei 342 Knoten, da der neue Algorithmus praktisch unabhängig von der Knotenzahl skaliert.

Les systèmes de commande en réseau (SCR) sont de plus en plus répandus dans le milieu industriel. Ils procurent en effet de nombreux avantages en termes de coût, de flexibilité, de maintenance, etc. Cependant,l'introduction d'un réseau, qui par nature est composé de ressources partagées, impacte considérablement les performances temporelles des systèmes de commande. Un signal de commande par exemple n'arrive à destination qu'après un certain délai. Pour s'assurer que ce délai soit inférieur à un certain seuil de sécurité ou du respect d'autres contraintes temps réels de ces systèmes, une évaluation au préalable, avant la mise en service d'un SCR, s'avère donc nécessaire. Dans nos travaux de recherche, nous nous intéressons à la réactivité des SCR client/serveur et évaluons leur temps de réponse.Notre contribution dans ces travaux est d'adopter une approche analytique à base de l'algèbre (Max,+) et remédier aux problèmes des méthodes existantes comme l'explosion combinatoire de la vérification formelle ou de la non exhaustivité des approches par simulation. Après modélisation des SCR client/serveur à l'aide de Graphe d'Evénements Temporisés puis représentation de leurs dynamiques à l'aides d'équations (Max,+) linéaires, nous obtenons des formules de calcul direct du temps de réponse. Plus précisément, nous adoptons une analyse déterministe pour calculer les bornes, minimale et maximale, du temps de réponse puis une analyse stochastique pour calculer la fonction de sa distribution. De plus, nous prenons en compte dans nos travaux tous les délais élémentaires qui composent le temps de réponse, y compris les délais de bout-en-bout, dus à la traversée du seul réseau de communication. Ce dernier étant naturellement composé de ressources partagées, rendant l'utilisation des modèles (Max,+) classiques impossibles, nous introduisons une nouvelle approche de modélisation à base du formalisme (Max,+) mais prenant en compte le concept de conflit ou ressource partagée.L'exemple d'un réseau de type Ethernet est considéré pour évaluer ces délais de bout-en-bout. Par ailleurs, cette nouvelle méthode (Max,+) est assez générique et reste applicable à de nombreux systèmes impliquant des ressources partagées, au delà des seuls réseaux de communication. Enfin, pour vérifier la validité des résultats obtenus dans nos travaux, notamment la formule de la borne maximale du temps de réponse, une compagne de mesures expérimentales sont menées sur une plateforme dédiée. Différentes configurations et conditions de trafic dans un réseau Ethernet sont considérées.

The rise of large data sets, or "Big Data'', has coincided with the rise of clusters with large amounts of memory and GPU accelerators that can be used to process rapidly growing data footprints. However, the complexity and performance limitations of sharing memory and accelerators in a cluster limits the options for efficient management and allocation of resources for applications. The global address space model (GAS), and specifically hardware-supported GAS, is proposed as a means to provide a high-performance resource management platform upon which resource sharing between nodes and resource aggregation across nodes can take place. This thesis builds on the initial concept of GAS with a model that is matched to "Big Data'' computing and its data transfer requirements. The proposed model, Dynamic Partitioned Global Address Spaces (DPGAS), is implemented using a commodity converged interconnect, HyperTransport over Ethernet (HToE), and a software framework, the Oncilla runtime and API. The DPGAS model and associated hardware and software components are used to investigate two application spaces, resource sharing for time-varying workloads and resource aggregation for GPU-accelerated data warehousing applications. This work demonstrates that hardware-supported GAS can be used improve the performance and power consumption of memory-intensive applications, and that it can be used to simplify host and accelerator resource management in the data center.