With the rapid development and widespread application of intelligent technology, high-performance embedded systems have penetrated into various fields, from consumer electronics, smart homes, smart healthcare to industrial control, automotive applications, etc., ubiquitous embedded devices are changing our work and life. However, the performance improvement of traditional single core systems has encountered bottlenecks and cannot meet the growing demands of these applications. In addition, edge intelligence also requires embedded systems to achieve architectural innovation to meet their requirements for performance, power consumption, real-time performance, and cost. Driven by these demands, multi-core systems and products have emerged as a new trend in the development of embedded systems.

A multi-core system refers to the integration of multiple processor cores on a single chip, each of which can independently perform data processing and control tasks to improve the overall performance of the system and meet specific application requirements. In multi-core systems, different kernels can be optimized according to their characteristics and requirements to meet different application scenarios. For example, high-performance kernels focus on performing computationally intensive tasks, such as the Arm Cortex-A series kernels, to meet high-performance requirements; High real-time kernels can focus on control intensive tasks, such as Arm Cortex-R or Cortex-M series kernels, to meet high real-time requirements.

Today, embedded systems in end devices or user devices not only face more complex processing tasks, but also need to be able to improve computational efficiency and meet the needs of specific scenarios through parallel computing or specific computing modes. For example, many embedded systems require high performance to complete tasks such as image processing, pattern recognition, and data analysis, while also requiring high real-time performance or completing tasks within a certain time frame. A multi-core system can meet various complex application requirements while ensuring overall performance.

Application scenarios of multi-core systems

At present, the application scenarios of multi-core embedded systems are very extensive. For example, China has become the world’s largest automobile production and sales country for 15 consecutive years, and automotive applications integrate a large number of embedded systems for controlling functions such as engines, brakes, navigation, entertainment systems, etc. The multi-core system not only meets the requirements of these functional units for high performance, low power consumption, and real-time performance, but also utilizes multi-core support for advanced safety functions through locking and other modes.

Multi core systems can parallelly process multiple and multiple tasks in industrial control systems, such as data acquisition, data processing, control output, etc., thereby improving production efficiency, reducing energy consumption, and ensuring production safety. In medical equipment, multi-core systems can provide high-performance computing power for complex information processing, supporting complex image processing, data analysis, and real-time control functions. Embedded multi-core systems promote embedded systems to complete more complex tasks and enter emerging intelligent applications by improving their real-time performance, system security, multitasking capabilities, accuracy, and reliability.

Classification and development of multi-core systems

Due to the significant differences in application and architecture, multi-core systems used for embedded systems can adopt multiple classification methods, which can be divided into homogeneous multi-core and heterogeneous multi-core in hardware, and symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) and asymmetric multiprocessing (AMP) in software. Different classifications not only represent their differentiation techniques in embedded systems, but also demonstrate their specific advantages for application scenarios. Today, with the widespread rise of RISC-V, multi-core systems have also brought new combinable cores, providing more choices for chip design and applications.

Compared to single core embedded systems, multi-core embedded systems are more complex in development and debugging, and developers also face more challenges. Therefore, a series of new solutions and tools are needed to support developers to complete development better and faster, and fully leverage the advantages of multi-core embedded systems. For example, the powerful toolset provided by IAR, a leading global embedded system development tool and service provider, can fully support the development and debugging of embedded multi-core systems.

From the recent series of online training conducted by IAR, it can be seen that the company not only provides a globally leading series of products that can be applied to multi-core system development and debugging, but more importantly, helps development engineers to have a more comprehensive understanding of multi-core systems, and ultimately integrates application scenarios and requirements, architecture and functional definitions, innovative advantages and practical skills of IAR tools, thereby helping customers develop industry-leading multi-core embedded systems and helping developers calmly cope with the challenges brought by multi-core embedded systems.

As a leading global provider of embedded system development tools and services, IAR provides developers with a powerful integrated development environment, IAR Embedded Workbench. It supports multiple processor architectures such as Arm and RISC-V, and provides C/C++compilers, linkers, debuggers, and other development tools to support developers in completing embedded system development on a unified platform.

The development and debugging of multi-core systems is one of the challenges faced by multi-core system developers. The IAR Embedded Workbench integrated development environment is very convenient for creating multi-core projects in one workspace, improving the efficiency of multi-core system development. Meanwhile, IAR also provides powerful debuggers that support SMP and AMP multi-core debugging, helping developers more efficiently identify and solve potential issues in multi-core systems. It is worth noting that the multi-core debugging of IAR Embedded Workbench not only supports multi-core debugging of Arm+Arm and RISC-V+RISC-V, but also supports multi-core debugging of Arm+RISC-V. Although this is relatively rare in the current market, especially in the Chinese market, it is expected to become more widespread and important.

The software of multi-core embedded systems has become more complex, so developers should significantly increase their attention to the quality of multi-core system code. IAR has launched corresponding code analysis tools for this, including static code analysis tool C-STAT and dynamic code analysis tool C-RUN. In the daily development process, using IAR static code analysis tool C-STAT and dynamic code analysis tool C-RUN can help developers identify potential implementation related issues in the code as early as possible, ensuring the stability and performance of the program, and thus better ensuring the quality and performance of the code.

Summary and Outlook

The intelligent development in the embedded field will also accelerate the introduction of new quality productivity and architecture systems, which will bring continuous innovation in automotive, industrial, medical, and other high-end applications, improve their product performance, data processing capabilities, and intelligence level, and bring broad opportunities and development space for these application markets. Enterprises also need to strengthen technological innovation and industrial upgrading to meet the growing needs of consumers.

As an enterprise actively embracing innovation, IAR provides a variety of tools and solutions for the embedded field with its rich experience, advanced technology, and cross architecture product portfolio such as Arm/RISC-V. Its products have been fully validated in long-term and extensive applications by domestic and foreign customers. IAR will continuously optimize tools and solutions, play a key role in the development and debugging of multi-core embedded systems, and work with industry partners to jointly promote the development of multi-core system technology and application modes, opening up a broader high-value market for embedded systems.

In the Chinese market, IAR will also work together with partners and customers to promote the development and application of embedded multi-core systems. In addition to the online training course of Multi core System Development and Debugging held earlier (playback can be found on IAR Aiya’s WeChat official account), IAR will also hold and participate in a series of activities and industry activities, including the second Shanghai Embedded World China, which will be held in Shanghai from June 12 to 14. In addition to exhibiting the world’s leading embedded development and embedded security solutions again (booth number: 638), IAR’s expert team will communicate with the audience and deeply discuss more embedded technologies and industry development trends, including multi-core systems.