Real-Time System Benchmarking with Embedded Linux and RT Linux on a Multi-Core Hardware Platform

Abstract: To catch up with the growing trend of parallelism, this thesis work focuses on the adaption of embedded real-time systems to a multicore platform. We use the embedded system of Xilinx ZCU-102, a multicore board, as an example of an embedded system without getting deep into its architecture. First, we deal with the tasks required to be able to make an embedded system operational and discuss why they are different from those for normal computer systems. The processes it takes to make a custom operating system for the given Xilinx embedded system are examined and patching the custom operating system along with customizing it is studied. We then take a look at related work in the field of benchmarking real-time systems and embedded systems and with a good understanding of related work propose a design similar to the related work for benchmarking embedded systems. The benchmarks we use run on multiple cores and aim at challenging the Xilinx board’s capabilities of running real-time tasks when the other cores on the board are occupied with performing independent tasks. We test the designed benchmarks on different conditions under two different operating systems of RT-Linux and Embedded Linux to study the differences between them. We then note how the RT-Linux would be a real upgrade for real-time systems if multicore operations are considered. The final result we have obtained is that core idling might decrease the performance of real-time tasks and RT-Linux might experience more interrupts but it is also better at recovering from interrupts.