VLDB 2026 Research / reviewers in the wild / expert
Shanker Shreejith
dblp:126/8221 · also Shreejith Shanker
· DBLP profile ↗
27ranked-venue papers
9as first author
13since 2021 · last 2025
0000-0002-9717-1804ORCID · verified
Domains — the database's venue-derived domains; a paper can count in several
Systems, architecture and hardware · 23 · 9 first-author · 11 since 2021Software engineering, systems software and programming languages · 3 · 2 first-author · 1 since 2021Computer networks · 1Graphics, computer vision, multimedia, augmented reality and games · 1 · 1 since 2021Applied, interdisciplinary, general and emerging computing · 1 · 1 since 2021
| Year | Publication | Venue | Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | FAV-NSS: An HIL Framework for Accelerating Validation of Automotive Network Security StrategiesabstractComplex electronic control unit (ECU) architectures, software models and in-vehicle networks are consistently improving safety and comfort functions in modern vehicles. However, the extended functionality and increased connectivity introduce new security risks and vulnerabilities that can be exploited on legacy automotive networks such as the controller area network (CAN). With the rising complexity of vehicular systems and attack vectors, the need for a flexible hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) test fixture that can inject attacks and validate the performance of countermeasures in near-real-world conditions in real time is vital. This paper presents an FPGA-based HIL framework tailored towards validating network security approaches (IDS, IPS) and smart integration strategies of such capabilities for an automotive CAN bus. FAV-NSS replicates an actual vehicular system environment with functional ECUs and network infrastructure on an FPGA, allowing functional validation of IDS/IPS algorithms, accelerator designs and integration schemes (software task on ECU, dedicated accelerator). Software APIs on the attached host machine control and configure ECUs, automate test case execution and log signals from the ECUs and the 'virtual' CAN bus during runtime. To show the efficacy of FAV-NSS, we evaluate an IDS accelerator integration problem, both as a traditional coupled accelerator (to the ECU), and secondly close to the CAN controller (mimicking an extended CAN controller). We show that the latter strategy can be fully validated by our framework, which would otherwise require integration of specialised CAN modules into otherwise standard HIL fixtures with ability to instrument internal signals for characterising timing performance. The tests demonstrate a promising latency reduction of$6.3 \times$when compared to the traditional coupled accelerator. Our case study demonstrates the potential of FAV-NSS for accelerating the optimisation, integration and verification of smart ECUs and communication controllers in current and future vehicular systems. Changhong Li, Shashwat Khandelwal, Shanker Shreejith |
ASAP | 3 |
| 2025 | FINN-GL: Generalized Mixed-Precision Extensions for FPGA-Accelerated LSTMSabstractRecurrent neural networks (RNNs), particularly LSTMs, are effective for time-series tasks like sentiment analysis and short-term stock prediction. However, their computational complexity poses challenges for real-time deployment in resource constrained environments. While FPGAs offer a promising platform for energy-efficient AI acceleration, existing tools mainly target feed-forward networks, and LSTM acceleration typically requires full custom implementation. In this paper, we address this gap by leveraging the open-source and extensible FINN framework to enable the generalized deployment of LSTMs on FPGAs. Specifically, we leverage the Scan operator from the Open Neural Network Exchange (ONNX) specification to model the recurrent nature of LSTM computations, enabling support for mixed quantisation within them and functional verification of LSTM-based models. Furthermore, we introduce custom transformations within the FINN compiler to map the quantised ONNX computation graph to hardware blocks from the HLS kernel library of the FINN compiler and Vitis HLS. We validate the proposed tool-flow by training a quantised ConvLSTM model for a mid-price stock prediction task using the widely used dataset and generating a corresponding hardware IP of the model using our flow, targeting the XCZU7EV device. We show that the generated quantised ConvLSTM accelerator through our flow achieves a balance between performance (latency) and resource consumption, while matching (or bettering) inference accuracy of state-of-the-art models with reduced precision. We believe that the generalisable nature of the proposed flow will pave the way for resource-efficient RNN accelerator designs on FPGAs. Shashwat Khandelwal, Jakoba Petri-Koenig, Thomas B. Preußer, Michaela Blott, Shanker Shreejith |
FPL | 5 |
| 2025 | An Empirical Study of Reducing AV1 Decoder Complexity and Energy Consumption via Encoder Parameter Tuning
Vibhoothi Vibhoothi, Julien Zouein, Shanker Shreejith, Jean-Baptiste Kempf, Anil C. Kokaram |
PCS | 3 |
| 2024 | An Energy-Efficient Artefact Detection Accelerator on FPGAs for Hyper-Spectral Satellite ImageryabstractHyper-Spectral Imaging (HSI) is a crucial technique used to analyse remote sensing data acquired from Earth observation satellites. The rich spatial and spectral information obtained through HSI allows for better characterisation and exploration of the Earth's surface over traditional techniques like RGB and Multi-Spectral imaging on the downlinked image data at ground stations. In some cases, these images do not contain meaningful information due to the presence of clouds or other artefacts, limiting their usefulness. Transmission of such artefact HSI images leads to wasteful use of already scarce energy and time costs required for communication. While detecting such artefacts prior to transmitting the HSI image is desirable, the computational complexity of these algorithms and the limited power budget on satellites (especially CubeSats) are key constraints. This paper presents an unsupervised learning-based convolutional autoencoder (CAE) model for artefact identification of acquired HSI images at the satellite and a deployment architecture on AMD's Zynq Ultrascale FPGAs. The model is trained and tested on widely used HSI image datasets: Indian Pines, Salinas Valley, the University of Pavia and the Kennedy Space Center. For deployment, the model is quantised to 8-bit precision, fine-tuned using the Vitis-AI framework and integrated as a subordinate accelerator using AMD's Deep-Learning Processing Units (DPU) instance on the Zynq device. Our tests show that the model can process each spectral band in an HSI image in 4 ms, 2.6× better than INT8 inference on Nvidia's Jetson platform & 1.27× better than SOTA artefact detectors. Our model also achieves an fl-score of 92.8 % and FPR of 0 % across the dataset, while consuming 21.52 mJ per HSI image, 3.6 ×better than INT8 Jetson inference & 7.5 × better than SOTA artefact detectors, making it a viable architecture for deployment in CubeSats. Cornell Castelino, Shashwat Khandelwal, Shanker Shreejith, B. Sharat Chandra Varma 0001 |
DSD | 3 |
| 2024 | ECG Biometric Authentication Using Self-Supervised Learning for IoT Edge SensorsabstractWearable Internet of Things (IoT) devices are gaining ground for continuous physiological data acquisition and health monitoring. These physiological signals can be used for security applications to achieve continuous authentication and user convenience due to passive data acquisition. This paper investigates an electrocardiogram (ECG) based biometric user authentication system using features derived from the Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) and self-supervised contrastive learning. Contrastive learning enables us to use large unlabeled datasets to train the model and establish its generalizability. We propose approaches enabling the CNN encoder to extract appropriate features that distinguish the user from other subjects. When evaluated using the PTB ECG database with 290 subjects, the proposed technique achieved an authentication accuracy of 99.15%. To test its generalizability, we applied the model to two new datasets, the MIT-BIH Arrhythmia Database and the ECG-ID Database, achieving over 98.5% accuracy without any modifications. Furthermore, we show that repeating the authentication step three times can increase accuracy to nearly 100% for both PTBDB and ECGIDDB. This paper also presents model optimizations for embedded device deployment, which makes the system more relevant to real-world scenarios. To deploy our model in IoT edge sensors, we optimized the model complexity by applying quantization and pruning. The optimized model achieves 98.67% accuracy on PTBDB, with 0.48% accuracy loss and 62.6% CPU cycles compared to the unoptimized model. An accuracy-vs-time-complexity tradeoff analysis is performed, and results are presented for different optimization levels. Guoxin Wang 0003, Shanker Shreejith, Avishek Nag, Yong Lian 0001, Chacko John Deepu |
IEEE J. Biomed. Health Informatics | 2 |
| 2023 | Real-Time Zero-Day Intrusion Detection System for Automotive Controller Area Network on FPGAsabstractIncreasing automation in vehicles enabled by increased connectivity to the outside world has exposed vulnerabilities in previously siloed automotive networks like controller area networks (CAN). Attributes of CAN such as broadcast-based communication among electronic control units (ECUs) that lowered deployment costs are now being exploited to carry out active injection attacks like denial of service (DoS), fuzzing, and spoofing attacks. Research literature has proposed multiple supervised machine learning models deployed as Intrusion detection systems (IDSs) to detect such malicious activity; however, these are largely limited to identifying previously known attack vectors. With the ever-increasing complexity of active injection attacks, detecting zero-day (novel) attacks in these networks in real-time (to prevent propagation) becomes a problem of particular interest. This paper presents an unsupervised-learning-based convolutional autoencoder architecture for detecting zero-day attacks, which is trained only on benign (attack-free) CAN messages. We quantise the model using Vitis-AI tools from AMD/Xilinx targeting a resource-constrained Zynq Ultrascale platform as our IDS-ECU system for integration. The proposed model successfully achieves equal or higher classification accuracy (> 99.5%) on unseen DoS, fuzzing, and spoofing attacks from a publicly available attack dataset when compared to the state-of-the-art unsupervised learning-based IDSs. Additionally, by cleverly overlapping IDS operation on a window of CAN messages with the reception, the model is able to meet line-rate detection (0.43 ms per window) of high-speed CAN, which when coupled with the low energy consumption per inference, makes this architecture ideally suited for detecting zero-day attacks on critical CAN networks. Shashwat Khandelwal, Shanker Shreejith |
ASAP | 2 |
| 2023 | Quantised Neural Network Accelerators for Low-Power IDS in Automotive NetworksabstractIn this paper, we explore low-power custom quantised Multi-Layer Perceptrons (MLPs) as an Intrusion Detection System (IDS) for automotive controller area network (CAN). We utilise the FINN framework from AMD/Xilinx to quantise, train and generate hardware IP of our MLP to detect denial of service (DoS) and fuzzying attacks on CAN network, using ZCU104 (XCZU7EV) FPGA as our target ECU architecture with integrated IDS capabilities. Our approach achieves significant improvements in latency (0.12 ms per-message processing latency) and inference energy consumption (0.25 mJ per inference) while achieving similar classification performance as state-of-the-art approaches in the literature. Shashwat Khandelwal, Anneliese Walsh, Shanker Shreejith |
DATE | 3 |
| 2023 | Exploring Highly Quantised Neural Networks for Intrusion Detection in Automotive CANabstractVehicles today comprise intelligent systems like connected autonomous driving and advanced driving assistance systems (ADAS) to enhance the driving experience, which is enabled through increased connectivity to infrastructure and fusion of information from different sensing modes. However, the rising connectivity coupled with the legacy network architecture within vehicles can be exploited for launching active and passive attacks on critical vehicle systems and directly affecting the safety of passengers. Machine learning-based intrusion detection models have been shown to successfully detect multiple targeted attack vectors in recent literature, whose deployments are enabled through quantised neural networks targeting low-power platforms. Multiple models are often required to simultaneously detect multiple attack vectors, increasing the area, (resource) cost, and energy consumption. In this paper, we present a case for utilising custom-quantised MLP's (CQMLP) as a multi-class classification model, capable of detecting multiple attacks from the benign flow of controller area network (CAN) messages. The specific quantisation and neural architecture are determined through a joint design space exploration, resulting in our choice of the 2-bit precision and the n-layer MLP. Our 2-bit version is trained using Brevitas and optimised as a dataflow hardware model through the FINN toolflow from AMD/Xilinx, targeting an XCZU7EV device. We show that the 2-bit CQMLP model, when integrated as the IDS, can detect malicious attack messages (DoS, fuzzing, and spoofing attack) with a very high accuracy of 99.9%, on par with the state-of-the-art methods in the literature. Furthermore, the dataflow model can perform line rate detection at a latency of 0.11 ms from message reception while consuming 0.23 mJ/inference, making it ideally suited for integration with an ECU in critical CAN networks. Shashwat Khandelwal, Shanker Shreejith |
FPL | 2 |
| 2022 | Deep Learning-based Embedded Intrusion Detection System for Automotive CANabstractRising complexity of in-vehicle electronics is enabling new capabilities like autonomous driving and active safety. However, rising automation also increases risk of security threats which is compounded by lack of in-built security measures in legacy networks like CAN, allowing attackers to observe, tamper and modify information shared over such broadcast networks. Various intrusion detection approaches have been proposed to detect and tackle such threats, with machine learning models proving highly effective. However, deploying machine learning models will require high processing power through high-end processors or GPUs to perform them close to line rate. In this paper, we propose a hybrid FPGA-based ECU approach that can transparently integrate IDS functionality through a dedicated off-the-shelf hardware accelerator that implements a deep-CNN intrusion detection model. Our results show that the proposed approach provides an average accuracy of over 99% across multiple attack datasets with 0.64% false detection rates while consuming 94% less energy and achieving 51.8% reduction in per-message processing latency when compared to IDS implementations on GPUs. Shashwat Khandelwal, Eashan Wadhwa, Shanker Shreejith |
ASAP | 3 |
| 2022 | IMEC: A Memory-Efficient Convolution Algorithm For Quantised Neural Network AcceleratorsabstractQuantised convolution neural networks (QCNNs) on FPGAs have shown tremendous potential for deploying deep learning on resource constrained devices closer to the data source or in embedded applications. An essential building block of (Q)CNNs are the convolutional layers. FPGA implementations use modified versions of convolution kernels to reduce the resource overheads using variations of the sliding kernel algorithm. While these alleviate resource consumption to a certain degree, they still incur considerable (distributed) memory resources, requiring the use of larger FPGA devices with sufficient on-chip memory elements to implement deep QCNNs. In this paper, we present the Inverse Memory Efficient Convolution (IMEC) algorithm, a novel strategy to lower the memory consumption of convolutional layers in QCNNs. IMEC lowers the footprint of intermediate matrix buffers incurred within the convolutional layers and the multiply-accumulate (MAC) operators required at each layer through a series of data organisation and computational optimisations. We evaluate IMEC by integrating it into the BNN-PYNQ framework that can compile high-level QCNN representations to the FPGA bitstream. Our results show that IMEC can optimise memory footprint and the overall resource overhead of the convolutional layers by ~33% and ~20% (LUT and FF count) respectively, across multiple quantisation levels (1-bit to 8-bit), while maintaining identical inference accuracy as the state-of-the-art QCNN implementations. Eashan Wadhwa, Shashwat Khandelwal, Shanker Shreejith |
ASAP | 3 |
| 2022 | A Lightweight Multi-Attack CAN Intrusion Detection System on Hybrid FPGAsabstractRising connectivity in vehicles is enabling new capabilities like connected autonomous driving and advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) for improving the safety and reliability of next-generation vehicles. This increased access to in-vehicle functions compromises critical capabilities that use legacy invehicle networks like Controller Area Network (CAN), which has no inherent security or authentication mechanism. Intrusion detection and mitigation approaches, particularly using machine learning models, have shown promising results in detecting multiple attack vectors in CAN through their ability to generalise to new vectors. However, most deployments require dedicated computing units like GPUs to perform line-rate detection, consuming much higher power. In this paper, we present a lightweight multi-attack quantised machine learning model that is deployed using Xilinx's Deep Learning Processing Unit IP on a Zynq Ultrascale+ (XCZU3EG) FPGA, which is trained and validated using the public CAN Intrusion Detection dataset. The quantised model detects denial of service and fuzzing attacks with an accuracy of above 99 % and a false positive rate of 0.07%, which are comparable to the state-of-the-art techniques in the literature. The Intrusion Detection System (IDS) execution consumes just 2.0 W with software tasks running on the ECU and achieves a 25 % reduction in per-message processing latency over the state-of-the-art implementations. This deployment allows the ECU function to coexist with the IDS with minimal changes to the tasks, making it ideal for real-time IDS in in-vehicle systems. Shashwat Khandelwal, Shanker Shreejith |
FPL | 2 |
| 2022 | A Lightweight FPGA-based IDS-ECU Architecture for Automotive CANabstractRecent years have seen an exponential rise in complex software-driven functionality in vehicles, leading to a rising number of electronic control units (ECUs), network capabilities, and interfaces. These expanded capabilities also bring-in new planes of vulnerabilities making intrusion detection and management a critical capability; however, this can often result in more ECUs and network elements due to the high computational overheads. In this paper, we present a consolidated ECU architecture incorporating an Intrusion Detection System (IDS) for Automotive Controller Area Network (CAN) along with traditional ECU functionality on an off-the-shelf hybrid FPGA device, with near-zero overhead for the ECU functionality. We propose two quantised multi-layer perceptrons (QMLP's) as isolated IDSs for detecting a range of attack vectors including Denial-of-Service, Fuzzing and Spoofing, which are accelerated using off-the-shelf deep-learning processing unit (DPU) IP block from Xilinx, operating fully transparently to the software on the ECU. The proposed models achieve the state-of-the-art classification accuracy for all the attacks, while we observed a 15x reduction in power consumption when compared against the GPU-based implementation of the same models quantised using Nvidia libraries. We also achieved a 2.3x speed up in per-message processing latency (at 0.24 ms from the arrival of a CAN message) to meet the strict end-to-end latency on critical CAN nodes and a 2.6x reduction in power consumption for inference when compared to the state-of-the-art IDS models on embedded IDS and loosely coupled IDS accelerators (GPUs) discussed in the literature. Shashwat Khandelwal, Shanker Shreejith |
FPT | 2 |
| 2021 | Heterogeneous Communication Virtualization for Distributed Embedded ApplicationsabstractDistributed embedded applications (DEAs) are typically implemented on diverse embedded nodes interconnected through communication network(s) to exchange data and control information to achieve the desired functionality. Conventional approaches of utilising a single large-bandwidth link in a distributed system are not efficient in large DEAs owing to diverse requirements and factors like cost, reliability, scalability and criticality, among others. Heterogeneous communication is a promising approach in DEAs, where the diverse nature of underlying protocols (wired/wireless, synchronous/asynchronous, multiple access modes and others) can be leveraged to meet such requirements, in addition to the benefits like aggregated bandwidth and robustness. However, utilising them ‘directly’ places significant complexity on the application as it needs to dynamically evaluate the channels and utilise different protocol structures for each case. Virtualising the communication channels would present a unified interface to the application by abstracting away low-level details, similar to virtualisation applied in compute architectures. However, unlike architecture virtualisation, virtualising heterogeneous communication particularly for resource-constrained device networks involves unique challenges imposed by the physical (wired/wireless) and logical domains (limited-bandwidth, small payload, protocols, channel access schemes, etc.), which needs to be concurrently evaluated to optimise the communication system. This paper presents a model and an optimal transmission strategy as the proof of concept for deploying heterogeneous communication in DEAs. The model is described at an abstracted level while capturing transmission parameters of multiple channels, which are then optimised to meet the application’s communication requirements. The model and the optimisation method are validated through simulation and a practical case study. Thinh Hung Pham, Shanker Shreejith, Sebastian Steinhorst, Suhaib A. Fahmy, Samarjit Chakraborty |
DSD | 2 |
| 2020 | DeCoRIC: Decentralized Connected Resilient IoT ClusteringabstractMaintaining peer-to-peer connectivity with low energy overhead is a key requirement for several emerging Internet of Things (IoT) applications. It is also desirable to develop such connectivity solutions for non-static network topologies, so that resilience to device failures can be fully realized. De-centralized clustering has emerged as a promising technique to address this critical challenge. Clustering of nodes around cluster heads (CHs) provides an energy-efficient two-tier framework for peer-to-peer communication. At the same time, decentralization ensures that the framework can quickly adapt to a dynamically changing network topology. Although some decentralized clustering solutions have been proposed in the literature, they either lack guarantees on connectivity or incur significant energy overhead to maintain the clusters. In this paper, we present Decentralized Connected Resilient IoT Clustering (DeCoRIC), an energy-efficient clustering scheme that is self-organizing and resilient to network changes while guaranteeing connectivity. Using experiments implemented on the Contiki simulator, we show that our clustering scheme adapts itself to node faults in a time-bound manner. Our experiments show that DeCoRIC achieves 100% connectivity among all nodes while improving the power efficiency of nodes in the system compared to the state-of-the-art techniques BEEM and LEACH by up to 110% and 70%, respectively. The improved power efficiency also translates to longer lifetime before first node death with a best-case of 109% longer than BEEM and 42% longer than LEACH. Nitin Shivaraman, Saravanan Ramanathan, Shanker Shreejith, Arvind Easwaran, Sebastian Steinhorst |
ICCCN | 3 |
| 2020 | A Power-Efficient Spectrum-Sensing Scheme Using 1-Bit Quantizer and Modified Filter BanksabstractSpectrum sensing is an efficient way to determine the spectrum availabilities over the frequency range of interest, aiding in improving the spectrum utilization in the cognitive radio (CR) systems. Conventional Nyquist multiband sensing entails higher computational capability for sampling, quantization, and subsequent processing, lending the approach infeasible for applications with limited power budgets. In this brief, a power-efficient spectrum-sensing technique is proposed, which explores an accuracy-complexity tradeoff. The presented spectrum-sensing architecture is based on 1-bit quantization at the CR receiver and implements it in hardware by a resource- and power-efficient approach, using a finite-impulse-response (FIR) filter-bank channelizer. The proposed scheme allows the complex operators like multipliers and quantizers to be replaced by the inverter logic and high-speed comparators, reducing the hardware complexity and power consumption. We validate the proposed scheme on a field-programmable gate-array (FPGA) emulator for an aeronautical L-band digital aeronautical communication system (LDACS) application, and our results show that the proposed scheme achieves substantial resource reduction with at most 5% degradation in the detection accuracy in this case. Libin K. Mathew, Shanker Shreejith, A. Prasad Vinod 0001, A. S. Madhukumar |
IEEE Trans. Very Large Scale Integr. Syst. | 2 |
| 2018 | A Smart Network Interface Approach for Distributed Applications on Xilinx Zynq SoCsabstractNetworked embedded systems have seen tremendous growth with many more complex critical and non-critical systems exchanging information over networks of various types. At each node, information is processed by the network stack before the application sees the data. Large portions of the stack are in software, resulting in significant and non-deterministic delays. While hybrid compute platforms like the Xilinx Zynq can accelerate processing tasks through offloading to programmable logic, the delays incurred due to connectivity can significantly impact overall application latency. In this paper, we present a smart network interface approach for the Xilinx Zynq platform based on datapath extensions within the otherwise standard Ethernet interface. We show that this approach improves computation offload latency by 24–27% and throughput by 37% for a complex computational kernel. Shanker Shreejith, Ryan A. Cooke, Suhaib A. Fahmy |
FPL | 1 |
| 2018 | Efficient Spectrum Sensing for Aeronautical LDACS Using Low-Power Correlators
Shanker Shreejith, Libin K. Mathew, A. Prasad Vinod 0001, Suhaib A. Fahmy |
IEEE Trans. Very Large Scale Integr. Syst. | 1 |
| 2017 | VEGa: A High Performance Vehicular Ethernet Gateway on Hybrid FPGAabstractModern vehicles employ a large amount of distributed computation and require the underlying communication scheme to provide high bandwidth and low latency. Existing communication protocols like Controller Area Network (CAN) and FlexRay do not provide the required bandwidth, paving the way for adoption of Ethernet as the next generation network backbone for in-vehicle systems. Ethernet would co-exist with safety-critical communication on legacy networks, providing a scalable platform for evolving vehicular systems. This requires a high-performance network gateway that can simultaneously handle high bandwidth, low latency, and isolation; features that are not achievable with traditional processor based gateway implementations. We present VEGa, a configurable vehicular Ethernet gateway architecture utilising a hybrid FPGA to closely couple software control on a processor with dedicated switching circuit on the reconfigurable fabric. The fabric implements isolated interface ports and an accelerated routing mechanism, which can be controlled and monitored from software. Further, reconfigurability enables the switching behaviour to be altered at runtime under software control, while the configurable architecture allows easy adaptation to different vehicular architectures using highlevel parameter settings. We demonstrate the architecture on the Xilinx Zynq platform and evaluate the bandwidth, latency, and isolation using extensive tests in hardware. Shanker Shreejith, Philipp Mundhenk, Andreas Ettner, Suhaib A. Fahmy, Sebastian Steinhorst, Martin Lukasiewycz, Samarjit Chakraborty |
IEEE Trans. Computers | 1 |
| 2016 | Accelerated Artificial Neural Networks on FPGA for fault detection in automotive systems
Shanker Shreejith, Bezborah Anshuman, Suhaib A. Fahmy |
DATE | 1 |
| 2015 | Virtualized FPGA Accelerators for Efficient Cloud ComputingabstractHardware accelerators implement custom architectures to significantly speed up computations in a wide range of domains. As performance scaling in server-class CPUs slows, we propose the integration of hardware accelerators in the cloud as a way to maintain a positive performance trend. Field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) represent the ideal way to integrate accelerators in the cloud, since they can be reprogrammed as needs change and allow multiple accelerators to share optimised communication infrastructure. We discuss a framework that integrates reconfigurable accelerators in a standard server with virtualised resource management and communication. We then present a case study that quantifies the efficiency benefits and break-even point for integrating FPGAs in the cloud. Suhaib A. Fahmy, Kizheppatt Vipin, Shanker Shreejith |
CloudCom | 3 |
| 2015 | Security aware network controllers for next generation automotive embedded systemsabstractModern cars incorporate complex distributed computing systems that manage all aspects of vehicle dynamics, comfort, and safety. Increased automation has demanded more complex networking in vehicles, that now contain a hundred or more compute units. As these networks were developed as silos, little attention was given to security early on. However, this has become a key challenge in the automotive domain, as these systems have been shown to be susceptible to various attacks, with sometimes catastrophic consequences. Addressing security in such systems requires consideration of the network and compute units, both hardware and software, and complex real-time constraints. We present an approach that integrates application authentication, message encryption and network access control into a smart network interface, without compromising network determinism. A custom interface with partial reconfiguration support on FPGAs enables seamless integration of security at the interface, offering a level of security not possible with standard layered approaches. Shanker Shreejith, Suhaib A. Fahmy |
DAC | 1 |
| 2014 | Zero latency encryption with FPGAs for secure time-triggered automotive networksabstractSecurity has emerged as a key concern in increasingly complex embedded automotive networks. The distributed architecture and broadcast transmission characteristics mean they are vulnerable and provide little resistance to intrusive and non-intrusive attack mechanisms. Incorporating data security using traditional approaches introduces significant latency which can be problematic in the presence of real-time deadlines. We demonstrate how a security layer can be added within the network communication controller in modern time-triggered systems, without introducing additional latency or processing overheads. This allows critical communications to be secured in a manner that is transparent to the processors in the electronic control units (ECUs), while also safeguarding network communication properties. Shanker Shreejith, Suhaib A. Fahmy |
FPT | 1 |
| 2013 | System architecture and software design for electric vehiclesabstractThis paper gives an overview of the system architecture and software design challenges for Electric Vehicles (EVs). First, we introduce the EV-specific components and their control, considering the battery, electric motor, and electric powertrain. Moreover, technologies that will help to advance safety and energy efficiency of EVs such as drive-by-wire and information systems are discussed. Regarding the system architecture, we present challenges in the domain of communication and computation platforms. A paradigm shift towards time-triggered in-vehicle communication systems becomes inevitable for the sake of determinism, making the introduction of new bus systems and protocols necessary. At the same time, novel computational devices promise high processing power at low cost which will make a reduction in the number of Electronic Control Units (ECUs) possible. As a result, the software design has to be performed in a holistic manner, considering the controlled component while transparently abstracting the underlying hardware architecture. For this purpose, we show how middleware and verification techniques can help to reduce the design and test complexity. At the same time, with the growing connectivity of EVs, security has to become a major design objective, considering possible threats and a security-aware design as discussed in this paper. Martin Lukasiewycz, Sebastian Steinhorst, Sidharta Andalam, Florian Sagstetter, Peter Waszecki, Wanli Chang 0001, Matthias Kauer, Philipp Mundhenk, Shanker Shreejith, Suhaib A. Fahmy, Samarjit Chakraborty |
DAC | 9 |
| 2013 | An approach for redundancy in FlexRay networks using FPGA partial reconfigurationabstractSafety-critical in-vehicle electronic control units (ECUs) demand high levels of determinism and isolation, since they directly influence vehicle behaviour and passenger safety. As modern vehicles incorporate more complex computational systems, ensuring the safety of critical systems becomes paramount. One-to-one redundant units have been previously proposed as measures for evolving critical functions like x-by-wire. However, these may not be viable solutions for power-constrained systems like next generation electric vehicles. Reconfigurable architectures offer alternative approaches to implementing reliable safety critical systems using more efficient hardware. In this paper, we present an approach for implementing redundancy in safety-critical in-car systems, that uses FPGA partial reconfiguration and a customised bus controller to offer fast recovery from faults. Results show that such an integrated design is better than alternatives that use discrete bus interface modules. Shanker Shreejith, Kizheppatt Vipin, Suhaib A. Fahmy, Martin Lukasiewycz |
DATE | 1 |
| 2013 | Enhancing communication on automotive networks using data layer extensionsabstractAutomotive systems function within a distributed computing paradigm consisting of networks of sensors, actuators and processing units. More advanced functions are finding their way into the automotive domain, making computing and networking more complex. While safety, security and determinism are primary concerns for many systems, the networking protocols do not provide extensions to address them and it is left to application designers to tackle these issues. Standardising simple features like time-stamping of messages and health status flags can help improve robustness and mitigate risks associated with replay attacks. It is also possible to integrate further protection, like encryption of messages, addressing the increasing security concerns in this domain. In this paper, we demonstrate a systematic way of accommodating such enhancements within a standard automotive network that retains interoperability with existing systems. We show how such enhancements can be made possible in both software and hardware to help add functionality above the core network specification. We also show that the enhancements incorporated at the hardware layer offers 20× better performance than the software-based approach. Shanker Shreejith, Suhaib A. Fahmy |
FPT | 1 |
| 2013 | Accelerating validation of time-triggered automotive systems on FPGAsabstractAutomotive systems comprise a high number of networked safety-critical functions. Any design changes or addition of new functionality must be rigorously tested to ensure that no performance or safety issues are introduced, and this consumes a significant amount of time. Validation should be conducted using a faithful representation of the system, and so typically, a full subsystem is built for validation. We present a scalable scheme for emulating a complete cluster of automotive embedded compute units on an FPGA, with accelerated network communication using custom physical level interfaces. With these interfaces, we can achieve acceleration of system emulation by 8× or more, with a systematic way of exploring real-world issues like jitter, network delays, and data corruption, among others. By using the same communication infrastructure as in a real deployed system, this validation is closer to the requirements of standards compliance. This approach also enables hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) validation, allowing rapid prototyping of distributed functions, including changes in network topology and parameters, and modification of time-triggered schedules without physical hardware modification. We present an implementation of this framework on the Xilinx ML605 evaluation board that integrates six FlexRay automotive functions to demonstrate the potential of the framework. Shanker Shreejith, Suhaib A. Fahmy, Martin Lukasiewycz |
FPT | 1 |
| 2013 | System-level FPGA device driver with high-level synthesis supportabstractWe can exploit the standardization of communication abstractions provided by modern high-level synthesis tools like Vivado HLS, Bluespec and SCORE to provide stable system interfaces between the host and PCIe-based FPGA accelerator platforms. At a high level, our FPGA driver attempts to provide CUDA-like driver behavior, and more, to FPGA programmers. On the FPGA fabric, we develop an AXI-compliant, lightweight interface switch coupled to multiple physical interfaces (PCIe, Ethernet, DRAM) to provide programmable, portable routing capability between the host and user logic on the FPGA. On the host, we adapt the RIFFA 1.0 driver to provide enhanced communication APIs along with bitstream configuration capability allowing low-latency, high-throughput communication and safe, reliable programming of user logic on the FPGA. Our driver only consumes 21% BRAMs and 14% logic overhead on a Xilinx ML605 platform or 9% BRAMs and 8% logic overhead on a Xilinx V707 board. We are able to sustain DMA transfer throughput (to DRAM) of 1.47GB/s (74% peak) of the PCIe (x4 Gen2) bandwidth, 120.2MB/s (96%) of the Ethernet (1G) bandwidth and 5.93GB/s (92.5%) of DRAM bandwidth. Kizheppatt Vipin, Shanker Shreejith, Dulitha Gunasekera, Suhaib A. Fahmy, Nachiket Kapre |
FPT | 2 |