Ever-smaller silicon geometries are reaching their physical limits. This threatens to slow the pace of Moore’s Law to a stand-still. As a result, multicore technology is becoming widely available to address the performance bottleneck. The key to successful multicore product development i... Mores system and application level software that takes full advantage of the parallel processing environment without being too difficult or time consuming to write and validate. Multicore silicon allows the flexibility to partition cores for specific functions thereby requiring fewer silicon components or replicating the same processing function across multiple cores to substantially increase processing power. LAN/WAN/MAN networking, mobile 4G/LTE, medical, automotive, and industrial control markets already use multicore processing, and the list is growing. The multicore channel keeps your finger on the pulse of silicon, platform, and software developments as they happen in order to make effective and efficient use of this quickly advancing technology.
Current legislation is now driving system feature requirements, specifically in the area of health and safety. This article focuses on the control subsystem (the programmable logic control function), and how multicore processors are helping to address safety requirements and provide additional functionality
needed in industrial control.
Constantly evolving, the EEMBC’s focus has shifted from benchmarking microprocessors to SoCs and even entire systems, targeting the automotive, networking, and smartphone/tablets markets. Additionally, the emergence and constant expansion of the multicore processor has brought added challenges as EEMBC benchmarks such real-world, yet ever shifting, multicore targets.
