Accelerating an embedded RTOS in a SoPC platform

SoPC platforms are becoming more prevalent as a solution for the implementation of embedded computing systems. This is due to their ease of implementation and highly customisable nature. We demonstrate a simple yet effective technique for accelerating an embedded RTOS running on a soft-core CPU in an SoPC platform. Custom instructions are developed to accelerate the task scheduling. We show rapid development of our technique can be achieved through the use of integrated SoPC development environments like Altera´s Quartus-II. Further, implementing a system running the same accelerated RTOS in the Opencores ORP SoPC platform shows the portability of our methods. A notable increase in the performance of key RTOS routines has been seen as well as a reduction in interrupt-latency at the cost of a minimal amount of FPGA real estate. We propose the novel use of custom instructions to access frequently used global data structures as an acceleration technique suitable for SoPC platforms.