Real-time scheduling coprocessor for NIOS II processor

In this paper we describe and analyze the main features of the Hardware Real-Time Scheduler Coprocessor unit (HRTC) for NIOS II processor. We describe how the HRTSC supports time, events, task and priorities. The HRTSC was designed as a SOPC component to incorporate real-time features for embedded real-time applications. The hardware architecture has an easy integration with the IDE programming environment. The Avalon interface showed to be an efficient specification to share memory and data communication among memory, processor and HRTSC. The performance of the HRTSC architecture is analyzed considering real-time flexibility, programmability and power consumption reduction.