Exploring multi-core solutions

Exploring multi-core solutions

Design-space exploration for multi-core embedded systems

Performance bottlenecks often originate from limits in computing platforms. As increasing the performance of computing platforms is no longer achievable through a rise in clock frequency, embedded systems increasingly rely on multi-core realisations to meet growing performance needs. However, the various alternatives for exploiting potential parallelism in multi-core embedded systems can yield very different performance gains.

Therefore, the alternatives must be carefully evaluated. For this purpose, design-space exploration methods are ideal for providing systematic analysis. They are an effective way to select the preferred design solution as a starting point for multi-core implementations.

Method description
  1. Performance modelling: Developing adequate (parameterised) models for performance analysis

  2. Calibration and validation: Calibrating the developed performance model to ensure adequacy by validating against single-core solutions

  3. Design space exploration: Investigating alternative ways to exploit potential parallelism in embedded applications

  4. Solution selection and realisation: Selecting a design solution with feasible performance as starting point for a multi-core implementation

Additional information