Last time, I wrote about a “multi-core” project that I was working on 30 years ago. To be fair, it was actually “multi-CPU” rather than “multi-core”, but many of the challenges were similar, as was the initial design decision to take the approach of distributing the processing capacity. It is interesting to draw a comparison between the system that we were developing all those years ago and modern ideas for multi-core design. A common approach is to use one core for real time functionality (running an RTOS like Nucleus perhaps) and another for non-real-time activity (maybe running Android or Linux).

Using multiple CPUs (or cores) presents a variety of challenges. One is the division of labor, which was reasonably straightforward in this case. Another is communication between the processors … (more…)