Run-Time Resource Management at the Operating System Level - Multi-objective Design Space Exploration of Multiprocessor SoC Architectures - page 115

Fig. 6.4 Different
commercial approaches are
reported comparing different
features for a RTRM. Data is
taken from [ 16 ]. For each
interesting feature, a value of
0 stands for no support, a
value of 1 stands for full
support, while a value in
between (e.g., 0 . 5) means the
feature is only partially
supported. This is especially
useful while comparing
hardware and software
implementations

on the central general-purpose processor (the “host”), and a slave RM server resides
on each system co-processor, e.g. DSP. The role of the master RM is to manage and
allocate slave DSPs, create tasks and allocate communication resources.
The approach followed by RTXC RTOS is based on the replication of RTOS
kernel services on each core of the target platform containing MPSoC and multiple
DSP coprocessors. However, there is no actual RM as we might think, since it is in
charge of the designer to decide for the allocation of tasks. This happens through the
use of the RTLib, but no run-time adaptation is provided [ 16 ].
The ARM MPCore is a multiprocessor platform for general-purpose operating
systems like Linux. In this context, Linux would act in SMP fashion, hiding the fact
that multiple Processing Elements (PEs) are present. In this way, the RM is embedded
in the underlying OS, and transparently provides to the applications a multi-core
environment with several available resources to speed-up application execution.
Last, Multiflex from STMicroelectronics addresses Nomadik platforms [ 21 ] con-
taining multiple general purpose processors executing either Linux or Symbian in
SMP configuration, and several customized application processors (ASIP) for video,
audio and 3D processing. Resource management is performed through a master-
slave configuration, like the one presented for OMAP platforms. Coprocessors are
effectively seen as devices where to push tasks for execution.

6.2.3 Run-Time Manager Components

This section presents a bird's-eye-view on the main components that a Resource
Manager is made by. This section provides a well-defined set of the components
specifying an RM, yet from a high-level perspective. This has been inspired by the
work in [ 16 ], presenting a valid, but yet incomplete, modeling of the RM components
and subsystems.
The core of an RTRM consists of the subsystem taking decisions about
the resource-to-task allocation problem; in other words, the core of an RTRM