Dynamic Reconfiguration of Tasks Applied to an UAV System Using Aspect Orientation

Abstract

Many modern applications require high-performance platforms to deal with a variety of algorithms requiring massive calculations. Moreover, low-cost powerful hardware (e.g., GPU, PPU) and CPUs with multiple cores have become abundant, and can be combined in heterogeneous architectures. To cope with this, reconfigurable computing is a potential paradigm as it can provide flexibility to explore the computational resources on hybrid and multi-core desktop architectures. The workload can optimally be (re)distributed over heterogeneous cores along the lifecycle of an application, aiming for best performance. As the first step towards a run-time reconfigurable load-balancing framework, application requirements and crosscutting concerns related to timing play an important role for task allocation decisions. In this paper, we present the use of aspect-oriented paradigms to address non-functional application timing constraints in the design phase. The DERAF aspectspsila framework is extended to support reconfiguration requirements; and a strategy for load-balancing is described. In addition, we present preliminary evaluation using an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) based surveillance system as case study.