Framework for performance analysis of RTOS-enabled embedded systems on FPGA

Over the past decade, the consumer market has been flooded with variegated embedded devices that are progressively becoming cheaper, faster and more power-efficient. New applications are constantly appended into these devices. This work is aimed at emulating such devices using some benchmarks and observing the performance gains that can be achieved by modifications to the design of different hardware as well as software components. We present a modular environment where new tasks can be flexibly incorporated into the proposed framework. Leon-3 soft core microprocessor core and RTEMS real time operating system (RTOS) have been employed in the experiments. The system was implemented on a Xilinx FPGA and also tested using the TSIM2 simulator. Using this framework, we have demonstrated an example which optimizes time slices allocated by RTOS to different applications in an embedded device. In particular, we have shown that at a certain optimal value, the performance in terms of execution time attains a steady state. The framework can be extended to include a range of reconfigurable platforms, embedded processors, RTOS and corresponding applications.