Augusto Vega

Title: Task Scheduling of Software-Defined Radio Kernels in Heterogeneous Chips: Opportunities and Challenges

Speaker: Augusto Vega, IBM Research (NY, USA)

Abstract: The proliferation of 'heterogeneous' chip multiprocessors in recent years has reached unprecedented levels, especially in the context of IoT and distributed edge computing (e.g. connected and autonomous vehicles). By combining the right set of hardware resources (cores, accelerators, chip interconnects and memory technology) along with an adequate software stack (operating system and programming interface), heterogeneous chips have become an effective high-performance and low-power computing alternative.

However, heterogeneous architectures come with new challenges. Fundamentally, the complexity derived from the design's heterogeneous nature challenges the effective scheduling of tasks (processes), a scenario that becomes even more critical when real-time execution deadlines must be met. This is particularly important in the context of GNU Radio, given that its underlying scheduler is completely unaware of chip heterogeneity today. Early stage prototyping and evaluation of GNU Radio scheduling policies in heterogeneous platforms becomes a valuable asset in the design process of a future GNU Radio scheduler.

In this talk, we present a new open-source simulator for fast prototyping of task scheduling policies, called STOMP (Scheduling Techniques Optimization in heterogeneous Multi-Processors) [1]. It is written in Python and implemented as a queue-based discrete-event simulator with a convenient interface that allows users and researchers to "plug in" new scheduling policies in a simple manner. We also present a systematic approach to task scheduling in heterogeneous platforms through the evaluation of a set of progressively more "intelligent" scheduling policies using STOMP. We rely on synthetic kernels representative of a GNU Radio application [2], including functions like Viterbi decoding and fast Fourier transform (FFT) that have to be scheduled across general-purpose cores, GPUs or hardware accelerators to meet the application's real-time deadlines. We will show results indicating that relatively simple scheduling policies can satisfy real-time requirements when they are properly designed to take advantage of the heterogeneous nature of the underlying chip multiprocessor.

[1] STOMP. URL: https://github.com/IBM/stomp [2] ERA. URL: https://github.com/IBM/era

Desired slot time: 30 mins

Title: Cooperative Perception in Future Cars using GNU Radio

Speaker: Augusto Vega, IBM Research (NY, USA)

Abstract: The phenomenon of self-driving (autonomous) vehicles is a symbol of the grand re-emergence of artificial intelligence and robotics as a promising technology. The most general model of future vehicular transportation is that of artificially intelligent, connected, autonomous vehicles (CAVs) [1].

In this talk, we present a representative open-source application for CAVs operating as a collaborative swarm and communicating via GNU Radio. The application, called ERA [2], incorporates local sensing, creation of occupancy grid maps, vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication of grid maps between neighboring vehicles using GNU Radio-based dedicated short-range communication (DSRC), and map fusion to create a joint higher-accuracy grid map [3]. Specifically, each vehicle in ERA uses its onboard sensors to generate local occupancy grid maps, which it communicates to other nearby vehicles using DSRC. When a vehicle receives occupancy maps from nearby cars, it merges the received ones with the locally-generated occupancy maps, expanding the scope and increasing the accuracy of this vehicle's perception. The DSRC transceiver adopted in ERA is an open-source GNU Radio implementation of the IEEE 802.11p standard by Bastian Bloessl [4]; while perception and map creation is implemented using ROS (Robot Operating System) [5]. We created an appropriate software interface between GNU Radio and ROS which enables proper execution and interaction of both frameworks.

In addition to presenting a deep dive into ERA's code, we will also show performance analysis results of ERA (including its GNU Radio components) and discuss potential acceleration opportunities for performance and efficiency improvement -- including optimizations of Viterbi decoding and complex exponential through hardware acceleration. We believe that ERA can help to fill the gap between the fast-growing CAV R&D domain and GNU Radio, specifically when it comes to the wireless communication aspect of future vehicles.

[1] A. Vega, A. Buyuktosunoglu, P. Bose, “Towards "Smarter" Vehicles Through Cloud-Backed Swarm Cognition,” Intelligent Vehicles Symposium 2018: 1079-1086.

[2] ERA. URL: https://github.com/IBM/era

[3] E. Sisbot, A. Vega, A. Paidimarri, J. Wellman, A. Buyuktosunoglu, P. Bose, D. Trilla, “Multi-Vehicle Map Fusion using GNU Radio,” Proceedings of The GNU Radio Conference 2019, 4(1).

[4] B. Bloessl, “IEEE 802.11 a/g/p transceiver for GNU radio,” URL: https://github.com/bastibl/gr-ieee802-11

[5] ROS. URL: https://www.ros.org

Desired slot time: 30 mins