Michael P Andersen and David E. Culler
EECS Department
University of California, Berkeley
Technical Report No. UCB/EECS-2014-162
August 25, 2014
http://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2014/EECS-2014-162.pdf
Over the course of the past decade, the evolution of ad- vanced low-energy microcontrollers has raised three ques- tions which this paper outlines and addresses. The first question is: Can a 32-bit platform be constructed that provides advanced features but fits within the energy constraints of a wireless sensor network? We answer this in the affirmative by presenting the design and preliminary evaluation of Storm – one such system based on an ARM Cortex-M4 that achieves 2.3μA idle current with a 1.5μS wake up time. The second question we answer is: Can this platform simultaneously meet the very different demands of both monitoring-type applications and cyber-physical systems? We demonstrate that this is indeed possible and present the design trade-offs that must be made to achieve this, yielding a module with a rich set of exported peripherals that fits in a 16mm x 26mm form factor. The final question explored by this paper is: If such a platform is possible, what new opportunities and challenges would it hold for embedded operating systems? We answer this by showing that the usage of modern 32 bit microcon- trollers requires reconsidering system architecture govern- ing power management, clock selection and inter-module de- pendencies, as well as offering opportunities for supervisory code and the coordination of common tasks without CPU in- tervention.
BibTeX citation:
@techreport{Andersen:EECS-2014-162, Author = {Andersen, Michael P and Culler, David E.}, Title = {System Design Trade-Offs in a Next-Generation Embedded Wireless Platform}, Institution = {EECS Department, University of California, Berkeley}, Year = {2014}, Month = {Aug}, URL = {http://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2014/EECS-2014-162.html}, Number = {UCB/EECS-2014-162}, Abstract = {Over the course of the past decade, the evolution of ad- vanced low-energy microcontrollers has raised three ques- tions which this paper outlines and addresses. The first question is: Can a 32-bit platform be constructed that provides advanced features but fits within the energy constraints of a wireless sensor network? We answer this in the affirmative by presenting the design and preliminary evaluation of Storm – one such system based on an ARM Cortex-M4 that achieves 2.3μA idle current with a 1.5μS wake up time. The second question we answer is: Can this platform simultaneously meet the very different demands of both monitoring-type applications and cyber-physical systems? We demonstrate that this is indeed possible and present the design trade-offs that must be made to achieve this, yielding a module with a rich set of exported peripherals that fits in a 16mm x 26mm form factor. The final question explored by this paper is: If such a platform is possible, what new opportunities and challenges would it hold for embedded operating systems? We answer this by showing that the usage of modern 32 bit microcon- trollers requires reconsidering system architecture govern- ing power management, clock selection and inter-module de- pendencies, as well as offering opportunities for supervisory code and the coordination of common tasks without CPU in- tervention.} }
EndNote citation:
%0 Report %A Andersen, Michael P %A Culler, David E. %T System Design Trade-Offs in a Next-Generation Embedded Wireless Platform %I EECS Department, University of California, Berkeley %D 2014 %8 August 25 %@ UCB/EECS-2014-162 %U http://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2014/EECS-2014-162.html %F Andersen:EECS-2014-162