Compilation of stream programs for multicore processors that incorporate scratchpad memories

The stream processing characteristics of many embedded system applications in multimedia and networking domains have led to the advent of stream based programming formats. Several multicore processors aimed at embedded domains incorporate scratchpad memories (SPM) due to their superior power consumption characteristics. The paper addresses the problem of compiling stream programs on to multi-core processors that incorporate SPM. Performance optimization on SPM based processors requires effective schemes for software based management of code and/or data overlay. In the context of our problem instance the code overlay scheme impacts both the stream element to core mapping and memory available for inter-processor communication. The paper presents an integer linear programming (ILP) formulation and heuristic approach that effectively exploit the SPM to maximize the throughput of stream programs when mapped to multicore processors. The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed techniques by compiling StreamIt based benchmark applications on the IBM Cell processor and comparing against existing approach.