Software compilation techniques for heterogeneous embedded multi-core systems

Abstract

The increasing demands of modern embedded systems, such as highperformance and energy-efficiency, have motivated the use of heterogeneous multicore platforms enabled by Multiprocessor System-on-Chips (MPSoCs). To fully exploit the power of these platforms, new tools are needed to address the increasing software complexity to achieve a high productivity. An MPSoC compiler is a tool-chain to tackle the problems of application modeling, platform description, software parallelization, software distribution and code generation for an efficient usage of the target platform. This chapter discusses various aspects of compilers for heterogeneous embedded multi-core systems, using the well-established single-core C compiler technology as a baseline for comparison. After a brief introduction to the MPSoC compiler technology, the important ingredients of the compilation process are explained in detail. Finally, a number of case studies from academia and industry are presented to illustrate the concepts discussed in this chapter.