Exploration of Multi-thread Processing on XILKERNEL for FPGA Based Embedded Systems

The present day FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) technology is capable to design high performance embedded systems based on its soft core (MicroBlaze) and hard core (PowerPC) processors, embedded memories and other IP cores. Embedded system design demands use of limited hardware resources with as minimum power as possible while providing higher throughput. One way to decrease the complexity of application is to use a thread-oriented design where a process is divided into a number of manageable pieces known as threads. Each thread is responsible for some part of the application, thus providing multitasking. Further, for real-time task execution we need to have an efficient RTOS (Real Time Operating System) infrastructure on FPGA. Deciding a particular scheduling algorithm for thread execution requires the knowledge of resource utilization for the specific scheduling policy. Hence, a proper exploration of the various thread scheduling algorithms in terms of resource utilization, for a given embedded platform is of much importance. The incorporation of XILKERNEL RTOS in FPGA is a latest facility. Though there exists a few research work on analyzing the resource requirement in multitasking scenario for a given embedded RTOS environment, our work on resource estimation for the various task scheduling policies using XILKERNEL is first of its kind. Implementation of real-time scheduling algorithm like RMS on XILKERNEL has also been endeavored, using OS virtualization, since it is not directly supported by the kernel of XILKERNEL.