An Efficient WCET-Aware Instruction Scheduling and Register Allocation Approach for Clustered VLIW Processors

Abstract

In real-time embedded system design, one major goal is to construct a feasible schedule. Whether a feasible schedule exists depends on the Worst-Case Execution Time (WCET) of each task. Consequently, it is important to minimize the WCET of each task. We investigate the problem of instruction scheduling and register allocation for a program executed on a clustered Very Long Instruction Word (VLIW) processor such that the WCET of the program is minimized, and propose a novel, unified instruction scheduling and register allocation heuristic approach. Our heuristic approach is underpinned by a set of novel techniques, including spanning graph-based WCET-aware live range splitting, WCET-aware dynamic register pressure control, WCET-aware basic block prioritization for performing integrated instruction scheduling and register allocation, and WCET-aware spill code handling. We have implemented our approach in Trimaran 4.0, and compared it with the state-of-the-art approach by using a set of 20 benchmarks. The experimental results show that our approach achieves the maximum WCET improvement of 29.61% and the average WCET improvement of 10.23%, respectively.