990-05-50-01-00With the rapid development and wide application of intelligent technology, high-performance embedded systems have penetrated into various fields, from consumer electronics, smart home, intelligent medical to industrial control, automotive applications, etc., ubiquitous embedded devices are changing our work and life. However, the performance improvement of traditional single-core systems has hit a bottleneck and cannot meet the growing demands of these applications. In addition, edge intelligence also requires embedded systems to achieve architectural innovation to meet their performance, power consumption, real-time and cost requirements. Driven by these demands, multi-core systems and products emerge at the historic moment and become a new trend in the development of embedded systems.
Multi-core system refers to the integration of multiple processor cores on a single chip, and each core can independently perform data processing and control tasks to improve the overall performance of the system and meet the specific needs of the application. In a multi-core system, different cores can be optimized according to their characteristics and requirements to meet different application scenarios. For example, high-performance cores focus on compute-intensive tasks, such as the Arm Cortex-A series, to meet high performance requirements. A high real-time kernel can focus on control intensive tasks, such as the Arm Cortex-R or Cortex-M series, to meet high real-time needs.
Today, embedded systems in end-side devices or user devices not only face more comple990-05-50-01-00x processing tasks, but also can improve operational efficiency and meet the needs of specific scenarios through parallel computing or specific operational modes. For example, many embedded systems require high performance to complete tasks such as image processing, pattern recognition, and data analysis, while requiring high real-time performance or completion of tasks within a certain time. Multi-core systems can meet the needs of various complex applications while ensuring the overall performance.
Application scenario of multi-core system
At present, the application scenarios of multi-core embedded system are very wide. For example, China has been the world’s largest automobile production and marketing country for 15 consecutive years, and automotive applications integrate a large number of embedded systems for controlling engine, brake, navigation, entertainment system and other functions, among which the multi-core system can not only meet the requirements of these functional units for high performance, low power consumption and real-time performance. It also supports advanced security features using multi-core through modes such as lockstep.
Multi-core systems can process multiple and multiple tasks in parallel in industrial control systems, such as dat990-05-50-01-00a acquisition, data processing, control output, etc., so as to improve production efficiency, reduce energy consumption and ensure production safety. In medical equipment, multi-core system can provide high-performance computing power for complex information processing, and support complex image processing, data analysis and real-time control functions. The embedded multi-core system promotes the embedded system to complete more complex tasks and enter new intelligent applications by improving the real-time, security, multi-task processing ability, accuracy and reliability of the system.
Classification and development of multi-core systems
Due to the large differences in application and architecture, multi-core systems used for embedded systems can be classified in a variety of ways, from the hardware can be divided into isomorphic multi-core and heterogeneous multi-core, from the software can be divided into symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) and asymmetric multiprocessing (AMP). The different classifications not only represent their differentiated technologies in embedded systems, but also illustrate their specific advantages for application scenarios. Today, with the widespread rise of RISC-V, multi-core systems have also brought new composable cores, so that chip design and application have more choices.
Compared with single-core embedded systems, multi-core embedded systems are more complex in terms of development and debugging, and developers are also facing more challenges, so a series of new solutions and tools are needed to support developers to complete development better and faster and give full play to the advantages of multi-core embedded systems. For example, the powerful toolset from IAR, the world’s leading provider of embedded system development tools and services, can fully support the development and debugging of embedded multi-core systems.
From the recent series of online training conducted by IAR, the company not only provides the world’s leading series of products that can be applied to the development and commissioning of multi-core systems, but more importantly, help development engineers more comprehensive understanding of multi-core systems. Finally, application scenarios and requirements, architecture and functional definitions, innovative advantages and practical skills of IAR tools are fully integrated to help customers develop industry-leading multi-core embedded systems and help developers cope with the challenges brought by multi-core embedded systems.
As the world’s leading provider of Embedded system development tools and services, IAR provides developers with a powerful integrated development environment IAR Embedded Workbench, which supports a variety of processor architectures such as Arm and RISC-V, and provides C/C++ compilers, linkers, debuggers and other development tools. Support developers to complete the development of embedded systems on a unified platform.
The development and debugging of multi-core systems is one of the challenges faced by the developers of multi-core systems. The IAR Embedded Workbench integrated development environment is very convenient to create multi-core projects in a workspace, improving the efficiency of multi-core system development. At the same time, IAR also provides a powerful debugger that supports SMP and AMP multi-core debugging, helping developers find and resolve potential problems in multi-core systems more efficiently. It is worth noting that the multi-core debugging of IAR Embedded Workbench not only supports the multi-core debugging of Arm + Arm and RISC-V + RISC-V, but also supports the multi-core debugging of Arm + RISC-V, which is relatively rare in the current market, especially in the Chinese market. But it is expected to become increasingly popular and important.
