Memory management in real-time multiprocessors

The Kumaran II architecture is a multiprocessor architecture targeted for real-time applications. The authors describe the specification and the implementation of the user-interface to Kumaran II memory management. Kumaran II contains seven MC68030 processors and 32 Mbyte of physical memory. Kumaran II enforces a strict memory management discipline which partitions the 32 M byte memory into seven 4 Mbyte local memories and one, 4 Mbyte shared memory area. A virtual memory system is provided by the MC68030. It was found that using virtual memory eliminates the chance of processors modifying the instructions and data of another processor and their own code. This in turn has reduced the amount of time spent in debugging multiprocessor applications. By avoiding paging to a secondary storage device and multi-level page tables, the normal overhead found in standard virtual memory implementations has been eliminated