An Efficient Protocol with Synchronization Accelerator for Multi-processor Embedded Systems

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1-2013

Publication Title

Parallel Computing

Volume

39

Issue

9

First page number:

461

Last page number:

474

Abstract

With the proliferation of multi-processor core systems, parallel programming imposes a difficult challenge where current solutions are far from being considered efficient. In order to alleviate the difficulty of parallel programming, we propose a scheduler, which is part of a master–slave RTOS, to efficiently manage the parallel programs running on a multi-processor core system. We also propose an efficient protocol that serves as the interface between the operating system and application programs. This interface protocol runs on a dedicated control subnet to cut down the synchronization overhead between the parallel tasks. Such synchronization overhead incurred in these multi-core parallel systems has been recognized as one of the severe limiting factors when pushing up the performance envelope. Experimental results, obtained from the register-transfer level simulations of various benchmark parallel programs, show that the proposed protocol and the control subnet can improve the system efficiency by up to 33.5%. This protocol, as it is designed to be compatible with the minimum subset of the message-passing interface functions (MPI), scales well with the number of cores.

Keywords

Interface protocol; Multicore; Parallel programming; Real-time operating system; Synchronization

Disciplines

Controls and Control Theory | Electrical and Computer Engineering | Electrical and Electronics | Electronic Devices and Semiconductor Manufacturing | Signal Processing | Systems and Communications

Language

English

Permissions

Use Find in Your Library, contact the author, or interlibrary loan to garner a copy of the item. Publisher policy does not allow archiving the final published version. If a post-print (author's peer-reviewed manuscript) is allowed and available, or publisher policy changes, the item will be deposited.


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