Multithreaded Programming of Reconfigurable Embedded Systems

Abstract

Embedded and Real-Time (ERTS) systems have continued to expand at a vigorous rate. Designers of ERTS systems are continually challenged to provide new capabilities that can meet the expanding requirements and increased computational needs of each new proposed application, but at a decreasing price/performance ratio. Conventional solutions using general purpose processors or custom ASICs are less and less able to satisfy the contradictory requirements in performance, flexibility, power, development time, and cost. This chapter introduces the concept of generating semi-custom platforms driven from a traditional multithreaded programming model. This approach offers the advantage of achieving productivity levels close to those associated with software by using an established programming model but with a performance level close to custom hardware through the use of a flexible hardware platform capable of adapting to specialized application requirements. We discuss the underlying concepts, requirements and advantages of multithreading in the context of reconfigurable hardware, and present two approaches which provide multithreading support to hardware and software components at the operating system level.