Enabling Mixed criticality applications for the Versal AI-Engines

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Sprave, Vincent, Wilhelm, Martin, Passaretti, Daniele, Garcia-Ortiz, Alberto, Pionteck, Thilo
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866913056516210688
author Sprave, Vincent
Wilhelm, Martin
Passaretti, Daniele
Garcia-Ortiz, Alberto
Pionteck, Thilo
author_facet Sprave, Vincent
Wilhelm, Martin
Passaretti, Daniele
Garcia-Ortiz, Alberto
Pionteck, Thilo
contents Adaptive Systems-on-Chips (SoCs) are increasingly being used in mixed criticality systems (MCSs), such as in autonomous driving, aviation and medical systems. In this context, AMD has proposed the Versal SoC, which has a heterogeneous architecture including, among other components, an Artificial Intelligence Engine (AIE), which is a 2D array of processors and memory tiles designed for AI and signal processing workloads. While this AIE offers significant potential for accelerating real-time data processing tasks, this has not yet been explored in the context of MCSs since individual tasks with different criticality levels cannot be dynamically assigned to tiles due to the static mapping of dataflow graphs and tasks. In this work, we propose a dynamic task dispatching infrastructure that enables task switching on the AIE at runtime. Based on this infrastructure, we present an MCS design that dynamically assigns tasks of different criticality to a pool of AIE tiles, depending on the criticality mode of the system. Our approach overcomes the limitations of static dataflow graph mappings and, for the first time, exploits the parallel processing capabilities of the AIE for MCSs. We also present a comprehensive timing analysis of the overhead introduced by the task dispatcher infrastructure, focusing on control logic, context switching and data copy operations. This shows that these operations have low variance and are negligible compared to the overall execution time, demonstrating that our infrastructure is suitable for MCSs. Finally, we evaluate the proposed infrastructure using an autonomous driving workload with tasks that have variable execution times and different criticality levels. In this case study, we maximized AIE utilization, reducing idle time by 65.5 %, while measuring an execution time overhead of less than 0.002 %, and doubling the throughput of low-criticality tasks.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_21124
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Enabling Mixed criticality applications for the Versal AI-Engines
Sprave, Vincent
Wilhelm, Martin
Passaretti, Daniele
Garcia-Ortiz, Alberto
Pionteck, Thilo
Hardware Architecture
Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing
Adaptive Systems-on-Chips (SoCs) are increasingly being used in mixed criticality systems (MCSs), such as in autonomous driving, aviation and medical systems. In this context, AMD has proposed the Versal SoC, which has a heterogeneous architecture including, among other components, an Artificial Intelligence Engine (AIE), which is a 2D array of processors and memory tiles designed for AI and signal processing workloads. While this AIE offers significant potential for accelerating real-time data processing tasks, this has not yet been explored in the context of MCSs since individual tasks with different criticality levels cannot be dynamically assigned to tiles due to the static mapping of dataflow graphs and tasks. In this work, we propose a dynamic task dispatching infrastructure that enables task switching on the AIE at runtime. Based on this infrastructure, we present an MCS design that dynamically assigns tasks of different criticality to a pool of AIE tiles, depending on the criticality mode of the system. Our approach overcomes the limitations of static dataflow graph mappings and, for the first time, exploits the parallel processing capabilities of the AIE for MCSs. We also present a comprehensive timing analysis of the overhead introduced by the task dispatcher infrastructure, focusing on control logic, context switching and data copy operations. This shows that these operations have low variance and are negligible compared to the overall execution time, demonstrating that our infrastructure is suitable for MCSs. Finally, we evaluate the proposed infrastructure using an autonomous driving workload with tasks that have variable execution times and different criticality levels. In this case study, we maximized AIE utilization, reducing idle time by 65.5 %, while measuring an execution time overhead of less than 0.002 %, and doubling the throughput of low-criticality tasks.
title Enabling Mixed criticality applications for the Versal AI-Engines
topic Hardware Architecture
Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.21124