Abstract
In an advanced System-on-Chip (SoC) for realtime applications, the arbitration algorithm of the on-chip communication architecture needs to support multiple non-realtime QoS criterions while ensuring hard realtime guarantee. To fulfill both, the arbitration algorithm must dynamically switch between non-realtime and realtime modes such that any unnecessary use of the later is eliminated to better satisfy the former. In this work, we isolate the problem to the warning line assignment problem and derive the optimal solution. Practical techniques and issues are addressed for general SoC applications. Experimental results show that using the proposed scheme, the number of times switching to the realtime mode is reduced up to 38%. Also, it helps reduce the execution time by as much as 18% when applied together with a commonly used arbitration policy. Finally, the hardware implementation is shown to be of low area cost and high operating frequency, which makes it applicable in SoC applications.