API for Performance Monitoring in Embedded Multicore Systems

Hardware Performance Counters (HPCs) are special registers available in the most modern processors that can be used to monitor shared hardware resources in multicore processors. Specifically for embedded real-time applications running on a multicore processor, such shared resources can affect their performance and cause deadline misses. This paper presents a hardware performance counter interface designed to embedded systems. The use of the interface is demonstrated through a benchmark that shares data between two threads executing in different cores of a multicore processor. As a result, the operating system can obtain an accurate view of software´s behavior.