Adapting Operating Systems to Embedded Manycores: Scheduling and Inter-Process Communication

Abstract: The aim of this thesis is to adapt a bare minimum version of Enea’s OSE, a real-time operating system to Tilepro64, a 32-bit many-core processor. The tasks include mapping memory regions, context handling and interrupt management and building drivers for programmable interrupt controller and timer. Time-based scheduling on the Tilera port of OSE has been achieved. Furthermore, design proposals for improving inter-core  data throughput in LINX for Linux have been suggested. The suggestions include using smart pointers and shared heaps as part of the user space thereby achieving a zero-copy mechanism. With reference to TILEPro64, consideration for leveraging the sharing of smart pointers using User Dynamic Network – a user accessible NoC – has been suggested in the adaptation design. Thus an inter-core  process communication design involving minimal kernel involvement and reduced usage system calls was proposed. This thesis is part of Portable and Predictable Performance (PAPP) on Heterogeneous Embedded Manycores - an active research initiative undertaken by Advanced Research and Technology for Embedded Intelligent Systems (ARTEMIS). It is also partly associated with the Many-core programming and resource  management for high-performance Embedded Systems (MANY) project and funded by Information Technology for European Advancement (ITEA2). The thesis work is carried out at Enea Software AB and XDIN AB.