• ETRI Journal
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• v.34 no.1
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• pp.44-54
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• 2012

Because of the intrinsic lack of internal-system observability and controllability in highly integrated multicore processors, very restricted access is allowed for the debugging of erroneous chip behavior. Therefore, the building of an efficient debug function is an important consideration in the design of multicore processors. In this paper, we propose a flexible on-chip debug architecture that embeds a special logic supporting the debug functionality in the multicore processor. It is designed to support run-stop-type debug functions that can halt and control the execution of the multicore processor at breakpoint events and inspect the possible causes of any errors. The debug architecture consists of the following three functional components: the core debug support block, the multicore debug support block, and the debug interface and control block. By embedding this debug infrastructure, the embedded processor cores within the multicore processor can be debugged simultaneously as well as independently. The debug control is performed by employing a JTAG-based scanning operation. We apply this on-chip debug architecture to build a debugger for a prototype multicore processor and demonstrate the validity and scalability of our approach.

• International journal of advanced smart convergence
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.28-35
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• 2022

This paper presents a performance evaluation of real-time Linux for industrial real-time platforms. On industrial platforms, multicore processors are popular due to their work distribution efficiency and cost-effectiveness. Multicore processors, however, are not designed for applications with real-time constraints, and their performance capabilities depend on their core configurations. In order to assess the feasibility of a multicore processor for real-time applications, we conduct a performance evaluation of a general processor and a low-power processor to provide an experimental environment of real-time Linux on both Xenomai and RT-preempt considering the multicore configuration. The real-time performance is evaluated through scheduling latency and in an environment with loads on the CPU, memory, and network to consider an actual situation. The results show a difference between a low-power and a general-purpose processor, but from developer's point of view, it shows that the low-power processor is a proper solution to accommodate low power situations.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.35 no.2
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• pp.301-310
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• 2013

Nowadays, the multicore processor is watched with interest by people all over the world. As the design technology of system on chip has developed, observing and controlling the processor core's internal state has not been easy. Therefore, multicore processor debugging is very difficult and time-consuming. Thus, we need a reliable and efficient debugger to find the bugs. In this paper, we propose an on-chip debug architecture for multicore processors that is easily adaptable and flexible. It is based on the JTAG standard and supports monitoring mode debugging, which is different from run-stop mode debugging. Compared with the debug architecture that supports the run-stop mode debugging, the proposed architecture is easily applied to a debugger and has the advantage of having a desirable gate count and execution cycle. To verify the on-chip debug architecture, it is applied to the debugger of the prototype multicore processor and is tested by interconnecting it with a software debugger based on GDB and configured for the target processor.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.10 no.7
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• pp.3231-3244
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• 2016

As processor design has been transiting from homogeneous multicore processor to heterogeneous multicore processor, traditional Amdahl's law cannot meet the new challenges for asymmetric multicore system. In order to further investigate the impact factors related to the Overhead of Data Preparation (ODP) for Asymmetric multicore systems, we evaluate an asymmetric multicore system built with CPU-GPU by measuring the overheads of memory transfer, computing kernel, cache missing and synchronization. This paper demonstrates that decreasing the overhead of data preparation is a promising approach to improve the whole performance of heterogeneous system.

• The Journal of the Institute of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.163-169
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• 2014

Recently, the importance of multicore processor system is growing rapidly. Multicore processors are classified either as symmetric or asymmetric. Asymmetric multicore processors consist of a high performance complex core and number of low performance simple cores, and are known to be more efficient than symmetric multicore processors. Therefore, performance impact on various configurations of asymmetric multi-core processor needs to be studied. Using SPEC 2000 benchmarks as input, the trace-driven simulation has been performed for different asymmetric quad-core and octa-core processors and compared to the corresponding symmetric ones.

• The Journal of the Institute of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.203-208
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• 2017

Recently, the importance of DRAM is very significant in multicore processors which are widely used in computers, laptops, tablet PCs, and mobile devices. To keep up with this, both industry and academia have actively studied various types of future DRAMs. Therefore, accurate DRAM model is requisite when evaluating the multicore processor performance. In this paper, a multicore processor trace-driven simulator which can couple with the cycle-accurate DRAM simulator has been developed. Using SPEC 2000 benchmarks as input, the effect of cycle-accurate DDR3 model on the multicore processor performance has been evaluated.

• The Journal of the Institute of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.251-256
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• 2017

Recently, multicore processor system is widely adopted not only in general purpose computers but also in embedded systems and mobile devices in order to improve performance. Since the power dissipation issue of multicore processor system is very significant, it must be estimated accurately in the early design stage. In this paper, a fast power analysis tool for a high performance multicore processor based on the trace-driven simulator has been developed. To achieve it, the power dissipation of each hardware unit per core are added. Using SPEC 2000 benchmarks as input, the trace-driven simulation has been performed to estimate the average power dissipation per instruction.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.198-205
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• 2013

In this paper, the performance of multicore processor architecture is analyzed which utilizes out-of-order superscalar processor core using multiple basic block execution. Using SPEC 2000 benchmarks as input, the trace-driven simulation has been performed for the out-of-order superscalar processor with the window size from 32 to 64 and the number of cores between 1 and 16, exploiting multiple basic block execution from 1 to 4 extensively. As a result, the multicore out-of-order superscalar processor with 4 basic block execution achieves 22.0 % average performance increase over the same architecture with the single basic block execution.

• The Journal of the Institute of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.171-177
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• 2013

Due to the demand for high speed 3D graphic rendering, video file format conversion, compression, encryption and decryption technologies, the importance of digital signal processor system is growing rapidly. In order to satisfy the real-time constraints, high performance digital signal processor is required. Therefore, as in general purpose computer systems, digital signal processor should be designed as multicore architecture as well. Using UTDSP benchmarks as input, the trace-driven simulation has been performed and analyzed for the 2 to 16-core digital signal processor architectures with the cores from simple RISC to in-order and out-of-order superscalar processors for the various window sizes, extensively.

• Journal of Computing Science and Engineering
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.285-299
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• 2013

To enable hard real-time systems to take advantage of multicore processors, it is crucial to obtain the worst-case execution time (WCET) for programs running on multicore processors. However, this is challenging and complicated due to the inter-thread interferences from the shared resources in a multicore processor. Recent research used the combined cache conflict graph (CCCG) to model and compute the worst-case inter-thread interferences on a shared L2 cache in a multicore processor, which is called the CCCG-based approach in this paper. Although it can compute the WCET safely and accurately, its computational complexity is exponential and prohibitive for a large number of cores. In this paper, we propose three counter-based approaches to significantly reduce the complexity of the multicore WCET analysis, while achieving absolute safety with tightness close to the CCCG-based approach. The basic counter-based approach simply counts the worst-case number of cache line blocks mapped to a cache set of a shared L2 cache from all the concurrent threads, and compares it with the associativity of the cache set to compute the worst-case cache behavior. The enhanced counter-based approach uses techniques to enhance the accuracy of calculating the counters. The hybrid counter-based approach combines the enhanced counter-based approach and the CCCG-based approach to further improve the tightness of analysis without significantly increasing the complexity. Our experiments on a 4-core processor indicate that the enhanced counter-based approach overestimates the WCET by 14% on average compared to the CCCG-based approach, while its averaged running time is less than 1/380 that of the CCCG-based approach. The hybrid approach reduces the overestimation to only 2.65%, while its running time is less than 1/150 that of the CCCG-based approach on average.