Hardware/Software Deadlock Avoidance for Multiprocessor Multiresource System-on-a-Chip

This thesis describes fast and deterministic deadlock avoidance methods that are easily applicable to real-time MultiProcessor System-on-a-Chip (MPSoC) design. This thesis first describes the proofs of the correctness of Parallel Deadlock Detection Algorithm (PDDA) and the run-time complexity of its hardware implementation in the Deadlock Detection Unit (DDU), proposed previously. The DDU has a worst-case run-time of O(min(m,n)) where m and n are the numbers of resources and processes, respectively. This thesis also provides detailed explanation and mathematical analysis of PDDA and the DDU along with examples, as well as extensive performance comparisons among PDDA in software, the DDU and an O(m x n) deadlock detection algorithm. The DDU is 100X or more faster than software implementations of deadlock detection algorithms. This thesis secondly proposes a novel deadlock avoidance algorithm and its hardware implementation in the Deadlock Avoidance Unit (DAU) that provides very fast and automatic deadlock avoidance in an MPSoC with multiple single-instance resources. The DAU avoids deadlock by not allowing any grant or request that leads to a deadlock. In case of livelock in an attempt to avoid deadlock, the DAU asks one of the processes involved in the livelock to release resource(s) so that such a livelock can also be resolved. We simulated two synthetic applications that can benefit from the DAU and demonstrated that the DAU avoids deadlock approximately 300X faster than its software implementation does. This thesis also proposes a novel Parallel Bankers Algorithm (PBA), a parallelized version of the Banker's Algorithm, and its hardware implementation in PBA Unit (PBAU) that provides fast, automatic deadlock avoidance for multiple-instance resource systems. The run-time complexity of the PBA is O(n) with the best case of O(1). The PBAU is about 1000X faster than the Banker's Algorithm in software and achieves in a particular example a 19% speed-up of application execution time. We believe that our approaches initiate a paradigm shift in the context of deadlock solutions for MPSoC from sole software to hardware/software partitioned solutions that enable a distribution of part of the burden imposed on processors to a low cost, fast hardware IP core exploiting full parallelism.Ph.D.Committee Chair: Vincent John Mooney III; Committee Member: Douglas M. Blough; Committee Member: Panagiotis Manolios; Committee Member: Sung Kyu Lim; Committee Member: William D. Hun