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.
Several design approaches exist for implementing beamforming processing tasks, with options ranging from GPUs to multicore CPUs, DSPs, and FPGAs. The unique strengths of FPGAs make them an increasingly appealing choice for beamforming when compared to their counterparts.
Securing data on connected embedded devices is a top priority among software developers and architects today. It seems with every passing week another major data breach is announced. Embedded software developers are quickly gaining the tools and technology to design safer, more secure connected devices. Developers can use ARM TrustZone technology to secure data in their designs in addition to embedded virtualization via a Type 1 Hypervisor to combine secure data, connectivity, and real-time operation through a real-time operating system (RTOS) and open source software to take full advantage of emerging multicore and heterogeneous system-on-chip (SoC) architectures.
Multicore architectures are increasingly useful for meeting the performance demands of increasingly complex embedded systems. However, implementation challenges are still widespread, and designers continue to struggle to come up with solutions in part due to the prevalence of proprietary tools and interfaces. The Multicore Association (MCA) aims to get vendors to work together and create industry-standard approaches to ease multicore integration. Embedded Computing Design discussed these issues with MCA President Markus Levy. Edited excerpts follow.
