Comparative analysis of middleware for multi-processor system-on-chip (MPSoC)

Efficient software is required in order to make optimum utilization of the full-scale features of the rapidly developing MPSoC hardware. Embedded MPSoCs are characterized by their heterogeneity and resource limitation. In addition, embedded MPSoCs systems would be required to deal with a complex set of tasks whose resource requirements cannot be easily determined statically at design time. Middleware is a particularly important software component of embedded MPSoC that enables the system to overcome heterogeneity and manage resources dynamically at run-time. An important part of the middleware is the run-time system manager responsible for the distributed resource manager of the MPSoC-based system. System management at run-time is important for many modern embedded systems because the tasks performed by the system vary over time. In this paper we explore design trade-offs for middleware systems targeting multi-core embedded systems. The experimental platform implemented for the project is presented and future work is highlighted.