Multi-Core Embedded Systems


Book Description

Details a real-world product that applies a cutting-edge multi-core architecture Increasingly demanding modern applications—such as those used in telecommunications networking and real-time processing of audio, video, and multimedia streams—require multiple processors to achieve computational performance at the rate of a few giga-operations per second. This necessity for speed and manageable power consumption makes it likely that the next generation of embedded processing systems will include hundreds of cores, while being increasingly programmable, blending processors and configurable hardware in a power-efficient manner. Multi-Core Embedded Systems presents a variety of perspectives that elucidate the technical challenges associated with such increased integration of homogeneous (processors) and heterogeneous multiple cores. It offers an analysis that industry engineers and professionals will need to understand the physical details of both software and hardware in embedded architectures, as well as their limitations and potential for future growth. Discusses the available programming models spread across different abstraction levels The book begins with an overview of the evolution of multiprocessor architectures for embedded applications and discusses techniques for autonomous power management of system-level parameters. It addresses the use of existing open-source (and free) tools originating from several application domains—such as traffic modeling, graph theory, parallel computing and network simulation. In addition, the authors cover other important topics associated with multi-core embedded systems, such as: Architectures and interconnects Embedded design methodologies Mapping of applications




Software Development for Embedded Multi-core Systems


Book Description

The multicore revolution has reached the deployment stage in embedded systems ranging from small ultramobile devices to large telecommunication servers. The transition from single to multicore processors, motivated by the need to increase performance while conserving power, has placed great responsibility on the shoulders of software engineers. In this new embedded multicore era, the toughest task is the development of code to support more sophisticated systems. This book provides embedded engineers with solid grounding in the skills required to develop software targeting multicore processors. Within the text, the author undertakes an in-depth exploration of performance analysis, and a close-up look at the tools of the trade. Both general multicore design principles and processor-specific optimization techniques are revealed. Detailed coverage of critical issues for multicore employment within embedded systems is provided, including the Threading Development Cycle, with discussions of analysis, design, development, debugging, and performance tuning of threaded applications. Software development techniques engendering optimal mobility and energy efficiency are highlighted through multiple case studies, which provide practical “how-to advice on implementing the latest multicore processors. Finally, future trends are discussed, including terascale, speculative multithreading, transactional memory, interconnects, and the software-specific implications of these looming architectural developments. This is the only book to explain software optimization for embedded multi-core systems Helpful tips, tricks and design secrets from an Intel programming expert, with detailed examples using the popular X86 architecture Covers hot topics, including ultramobile devices, low-power designs, Pthreads vs. OpenMP, and heterogeneous cores




Embedded Memory Design for Multi-Core and Systems on Chip


Book Description

This book describes the various tradeoffs systems designers face when designing embedded memory. Readers designing multi-core systems and systems on chip will benefit from the discussion of different topics from memory architecture, array organization, circuit design techniques and design for test. The presentation enables a multi-disciplinary approach to chip design, which bridges the gap between the architecture level and circuit level, in order to address yield, reliability and power-related issues for embedded memory.




Multicore Hardware-software Design and Verification Techniques


Book Description

"The surge of multicore processors coming into the market and on users' desktops has made parallel computing the focus of attention once again. This time, however, it is led by the industry, which ensures that multicore computing is here to stay. Neverthel"




Advanced Multicore Systems-On-Chip


Book Description

From basic architecture, interconnection, and parallelization to power optimization, this book provides a comprehensive description of emerging multicore systems-on-chip (MCSoCs) hardware and software design. Highlighting both fundamentals and advanced software and hardware design, it can serve as a primary textbook for advanced courses in MCSoCs design and embedded systems. The first three chapters introduce MCSoCs architectures, present design challenges and conventional design methods, and describe in detail the main building blocks of MCSoCs. Chapters 4, 5, and 6 discuss fundamental and advanced on-chip interconnection network technologies for multi and many core SoCs, enabling readers to understand the microarchitectures for on-chip routers and network interfaces that are essential in the context of latency, area, and power constraints. With the rise of multicore and many-core systems, concurrency is becoming a major issue in the daily life of a programmer. Thus, compiler and software development tools are critical in helping programmers create high-performance software. Programmers should make sure that their parallelized program codes will not cause race condition, memory-access deadlocks, or other faults that may crash their entire systems. As such, Chapter 7 describes a novel parallelizing compiler design for high-performance computing. Chapter 8 provides a detailed investigation of power reduction techniques for MCSoCs at component and network levels. It discusses energy conservation in general hardware design, and also in embedded multicore system components, such as CPUs, disks, displays and memories. Lastly, Chapter 9 presents a real embedded MCSoCs system design targeted for health monitoring in the elderly.




Multicore Technology


Book Description

The saturation of design complexity and clock frequencies for single-core processors has resulted in the emergence of multicore architectures as an alternative design paradigm. Nowadays, multicore/multithreaded computing systems are not only a de-facto standard for high-end applications, they are also gaining popularity in the field of embedded computing. The start of the multicore era has altered the concepts relating to almost all of the areas of computer architecture design, including core design, memory management, thread scheduling, application support, inter-processor communication, debugging, and power management. This book gives readers a holistic overview of the field and guides them to further avenues of research by covering the state of the art in this area. It includes contributions from industry as well as academia.




Real-Time Systems Development with RTEMS and Multicore Processors


Book Description

The proliferation of multicore processors in the embedded market for Internet-of-Things (IoT) and Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) makes developing real-time embedded applications increasingly difficult. What is the underlying theory that makes multicore real-time possible? How does theory influence application design? When is a real-time operating system (RTOS) useful? What RTOS features do applications need? How does a mature RTOS help manage the complexity of multicore hardware? Real-Time Systems Development with RTEMS and Multicore Processors answers these questions and more with exemplar Real-Time Executive for Multiprocessor Systems (RTEMS) RTOS to provide concrete advice and examples for constructing useful, feature-rich applications. RTEMS is free, open-source software that supports multi-processor systems for over a dozen CPU architectures and over 150 specific system boards in applications spanning the range of IoT and CPS domains such as satellites, particle accelerators, robots, racing motorcycles, building controls, medical devices, and more. The focus of this book is on enabling real-time embedded software engineering while providing sufficient theoretical foundations and hardware background to understand the rationale for key decisions in RTOS and application design and implementation. The topics covered in this book include: Cross-compilation for embedded systems development Concurrent programming models used in real-time embedded software Real-time scheduling theory and algorithms used in wide practice Usage and comparison of two application programmer interfaces (APIs) in real-time embedded software: POSIX and the RTEMS Classic APIs Design and implementation in RTEMS of commonly found RTOS features for schedulers, task management, time-keeping, inter-task synchronization, inter-task communication, and networking The challenges introduced by multicore hardware, advances in multicore real-time theory, and software engineering multicore real-time systems with RTEMS All the authors of this book are experts in the academic field of real-time embedded systems. Two of the authors are primary open-source maintainers of the RTEMS software project.




Real World Multicore Embedded Systems


Book Description

This Expert Guide gives you the techniques and technologies in embedded multicore to optimally design and implement your embedded system. Written by experts with a solutions focus, this encyclopedic reference gives you an indispensable aid to tackling the day-to-day problems when building and managing multicore embedded systems. Following an embedded system design path from start to finish, our team of experts takes you from architecture, through hardware implementation to software programming and debug. With this book you will learn: • What motivates multicore • The architectural options and tradeoffs; when to use what • How to deal with the unique hardware challenges that multicore presents • How to manage the software infrastructure in a multicore environment • How to write effective multicore programs • How to port legacy code into a multicore system and partition legacy software • How to optimize both the system and software • The particular challenges of debugging multicore hardware and software - Examples demonstrating timeless implementation details - Proven and practical techniques reflecting the authors' expertise built from years of experience and key advice on tackling critical issues




Embedded System Design


Book Description

Until the late 1980s, information processing was associated with large mainframe computers and huge tape drives. During the 1990s, this trend shifted toward information processing with personal computers, or PCs. The trend toward miniaturization continues and in the future the majority of information processing systems will be small mobile computers, many of which will be embedded into larger products and interfaced to the physical environment. Hence, these kinds of systems are called embedded systems. Embedded systems together with their physical environment are called cyber-physical systems. Examples include systems such as transportation and fabrication equipment. It is expected that the total market volume of embedded systems will be significantly larger than that of traditional information processing systems such as PCs and mainframes. Embedded systems share a number of common characteristics. For example, they must be dependable, efficient, meet real-time constraints and require customized user interfaces (instead of generic keyboard and mouse interfaces). Therefore, it makes sense to consider common principles of embedded system design. Embedded System Design starts with an introduction into the area and a survey of specification models and languages for embedded and cyber-physical systems. It provides a brief overview of hardware devices used for such systems and presents the essentials of system software for embedded systems, like real-time operating systems. The book also discusses evaluation and validation techniques for embedded systems. Furthermore, the book presents an overview of techniques for mapping applications to execution platforms. Due to the importance of resource efficiency, the book also contains a selected set of optimization techniques for embedded systems, including special compilation techniques. The book closes with a brief survey on testing. Embedded System Design can be used as a text book for courses on embedded systems and as a source which provides pointers to relevant material in the area for PhD students and teachers. It assumes a basic knowledge of information processing hardware and software. Courseware related to this book is available at http://ls12-www.cs.tu-dortmund.de/~marwedel.




Multicore DSP


Book Description

The only book to offer special coverage of the fundamentals of multicore DSP for implementation on the TMS320C66xx SoC This unique book provides readers with an understanding of the TMS320C66xx SoC as well as its constraints. It offers critical analysis of each element, which not only broadens their knowledge of the subject, but aids them in gaining a better understanding of how these elements work so well together. Written by Texas Instruments’ First DSP Educator Award winner, Naim Dahnoun, the book teaches readers how to use the development tools, take advantage of the maximum performance and functionality of this processor and have an understanding of the rich content which spans from architecture, development tools and programming models, such as OpenCL and OpenMP, to debugging tools. It also covers various multicore audio and image applications in detail. Additionally, this one-of-a-kind book is supplemented with: A rich set of tested laboratory exercises and solutions Audio and Image processing applications source code for the Code Composer Studio (integrated development environment from Texas Instruments) Multiple tables and illustrations With no other book on the market offering any coverage at all on the subject and its rich content with twenty chapters, Multicore DSP: From Algorithms to Real-time Implementation on the TMS320C66x SoC is a rare and much-needed source of information for undergraduates and postgraduates in the field that allows them to make real-time applications work in a relatively short period of time. It is also incredibly beneficial to hardware and software engineers involved in programming real-time embedded systems.